


When She Needs You Most

by anonymous0503



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/M, Ghoul Body Image Issues, Ghouls, Grief/Mourning, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 22,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24314881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous0503/pseuds/anonymous0503
Summary: A head injury causes Nora to forget everything about her post-nuclear life in the Commonwealth, including her ghoul partner, who’s unsure he still has a place in her life.
Relationships: John Hancock/Female Sole Survivor, John Hancock/Sole Survivor (Fallout)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 115





	1. Chapter 1

“Hey, the general’s back.”

“The general’s back.”

Word flew through the small city of shanty homes and pre-war structures. Nora barely had enough time to allow the gates to close before a mob encircled her. MacCready, her traveling companion, instinctively took a step back but was inevitably caught in the throng of bodies.

Like slipping into a familiar coat, Nora greeted the sea of faces with a smile and authoritative answers to the queries they brought. Without breaking her stride, the mob moved with her as she relayed updates from her trip, settled disputes, and barked orders for an immediate supply allotment to be sent to Finch Farm

Groping hands reached for her packs, heavily laden from her travels, and Nora let the straps fall from her shoulders mid-sentence. Her modified laser rifle was also taken, disappearing into the crowd almost instantly. MacCready similarly surrendered his bags but kept a tight hold on his sniper rifle.

The procession moved down the street at a steady pace until it reached the heart of the settlement. Nora stood strong against the continuing volley of requests for direction or approval. Meanwhile, her packs sat a short distance away, disemboweled inside a circle of volunteers – most of them teenagers or older children. The spoils of her exploration were thoroughly sorted and stashed well before the welcome ritual reached a conclusion.

When a series of distant yips and barks reached the group, everyone instinctively parted for the German shepherd running at top speed. Squatting in the street with open arms, the General of the Minutemen was bowled over by a flurry of fur and tongue and tail. Many onlookers chuckled as the wiggling animal made happy whines and plastered his favorite person with hair and saliva. After a few minutes of proper doggy welcoming, Nora stood to finish addressing the residents of Sanctuary, her faithful companion firmly lodged between her knees.

At last, the final curious soul turned away to attend to other matters in the settlement. Even MacCready had abandoned her, slipping out of the crowd unnoticed. Nora bent down to be at eye level with her dog.

“Hey puppy boy. Where’s daddy, huh?”

With a yip and a quick lick, Dogmeat led her back up the street to her pre-war house. In the shade of the old carport, he stood waiting for her. As she crossed the driveway, she wore a different smile – one quieter than her general’s smile, nodding along to half a dozen storeroom updates.

Arms opened to embrace her, but she bypassed his tame reception and shot straight for the mouth. Her hands grasped at velvet-capped shoulders, drawing him closer as their lips moved together. Live gravel in a tumbler, his low chuckle traveled deep into her chest. Once satisfied, she broke the kiss with a sigh and pressed her nose into his neck, her cheek resting on the sleek collar of his coat.

Hancock ran his hands up and down her back and over her hips. “Missed me _that_ much, huh?” he asked with a grin.

She hummed contentedly. “More.”

“More than that?” he said, pulling her back to look into her eyes, then stilled.

Surrounded by a nuclear wasteland, in the shade of a sagging carport, she was the most beautiful woman he ever laid eyes on, and the best thing in his life. Even now, he still felt that breathtaking tightness in the pit of his stomach when she looked at him like that.

“Welcome back,” he murmured, leaning in to place a gentle kiss on her cherry-flavored lips.

Dogmeat squeezed in between their legs, panting happily. They both gave him affectionate scratches.

“How was your trip?” he asked.

“General?”

Preston stood at the edge of the driveway, tipping his hat.

“If you’re not too busy,” he continued, “I’d like to show you the temporary irrigation solution I mentioned? Before we lose the light.”

Her shoulders sagged, but Hancock stopped her before she could apologize. “Go,” he said, nudging her towards her colonel. “Take care of business. You know where I’ll be.”

“We’ll be quick,” she said with a final kiss.

“No rush,” he replied, watching Nora, Preston, and Dogmeat head up the street.


	2. Chapter 2

Morning sunshine streamed through the bedroom windows of Nora’s pre-war house. Outside, brahmin lowed as overnighted traders prepared to depart.

Though it was past the time when he was normally up, Hancock lay in bed with Nora’s head resting on his chest. Someone on the far side of the neighborhood had a radio playing, and Nora softly hummed along to the tune.

He closed his eyes as her questing fingers trailed up the sensitive edge of his ribs. This was his favorite part of lazy mornings. Lying with his gorgeous Nora, her toes tapping against his ankle and her eyes studying the texture of his skin as if all of life’s secrets were printed on it in small font. Over the last six months, she had mapped and remapped every divot and crease until he was certain she knew his body better than he did.

Hancock knew people who had a fetish for the ghoulish, and playing an item on a bucket list had served him well many a time. Nora wasn’t one of them. When he’d tried to make a joke about it, she told him, “John, I like your skin because it’s a part of you. Not the other way around.” It was just what he needed to hear.

Yep, ever since he gave up the chems (and found something better), this was his favorite way to spend the morning. She pressed a long kiss to his sternum and he couldn’t help but smirk. Okay, maybe it was his second favorite way.

“Hey,” he said with light indignation, “my mouth is up here.”

Complying with his request, she crawled up to look at him face-to-face. “You’re insatiable,” she whispered, placing a searing kiss on his lips with a little bit of tongue for good measure.

When she released him to breathe, he flipped their positions. “Well, if you’re offering,” he mumbled, peppering some light nips across her neck and shoulders.

She squeaked and squirmed but eventually found her voice. “Again? John, I’ve got things to do today,” she protested.

“Oh yeah? Am I on that list?”

“Naughty,” she teased. “Listen, I know I just got back, but if you-”

He cut her off by sealing his mouth over hers. She sighed and he couldn’t help but breathe her in. When he eased up, Nora had the shy bedroom eyes that twisted his insides like a mini deathclaw.

“You don’t gotta make excuses, love,” he said. “I got all the time in the world for you. Now c’mon.” He pulled her up with him and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Up and at ‘em.”

Arms wrapped around his shoulders, fingers running along the patterns in their wake.

“I love you, John,” she said, cheek pressed against his back.

“I love you too, Nora.”


	3. Chapter 3

Sanctuary was Nora’s treasure, as well as her home. What was once a rundown pre-war neighborhood now served as the Commonwealth’s single largest settlement and trading hub north of the Charles River. Nora and Hancock spent the rest of the morning walking the length and breadth of the settlement – lending a hand to the many ongoing building projects, inspecting the automated defenses, and catching up with the scores of people who called Nora “friend.”

They were down by the river, resting in the shade of the bridge, when Deacon returned from his early dawn hunt. Strong followed a little ways behind him with a field-dressed doe in each hand.

“Wow,” Nora called up to them. “That’s some good looking meat. Way to go, boys.”

“Sneaky human is good hunter,” Strong bellowed. “Strong help carry meat.”

“Oh, you were talking about the deer,” Deacon joked, adjusting his grip on his sniper rifle and Strong’s sledgehammer. “Well, since MacCready decided to sleep in this morning, someone had to take the responsibility of bringing home the bacon. Or deer, in this case”

“We may not have a shortage, but I’m sure a lot of people will be very appreciative. Good shooting,” she replied as the two continued into the settlement. Subconsciously, she stroked the barrel of her laser rifle as they disappeared from view.

“Maybe not yet,” Piper interjected from where she sat on a rock, “but if things keep going the way they have been, we might not have much to show from our gardens in the coming months.”

“I know, Marcy was telling me about it yesterday,” Nora said, picking her way among the rocks to stick her feet in the trickling water. “I’ve never seen the river this low. Did we not get enough rainfall this spring or something?”

“Seemed about average to me,” Piper replied. Hancock nodded in agreement.

“There’s still enough to keep the purifiers running,” Nora said, looking upstream to where the largest unit sat chugging away. “And Misty Lake’s at a good level. All the well lines are still flowing, but I’d rather keep those dedicated to cooking and washing. Push comes to shove, we can set a pump down at the lake and run a line to our fields.

“Speaking of which,” she said, tiptoeing out of the stream, “I wanted to go check on Sturges. Make sure we have enough piping in the first place.”

They made their way towards the center of the neighborhood with the occasional greeting from a trader or Minuteman. Codsworth hovered in front of the common house as they passed, shaking the dust out of a mat.

“Hey Codsworth,” Nora called. “Is Sturges in?”

“Why, I do believe so, mum,” he replied. One of his eyestalks swiveled in the direction of the resident handyman’s workshop garage. “There’s certainly been enough racket to suggest as much.”

True to the bot’s warning, when Hancock pushed open the metal door, they were greeted with the sounds of metal-on-metal and idling power tools. A set of T-45 power armor hung from the stand in the center of the garage while a second set – Paladin Danse’s by the look of it – stood off to the side. MacCready leaned against a cluttered workbench with a smug smile.

Sturges appeared from one of the smaller connecting storage rooms with a box of rivets in his good hand. “I appreciate the input, but changing out the shocks is only gonna leave less room for the actuators.”

“And I’m telling you,” Danse said, a stride behind him, “that the shocks should have been installed before the actuators. The armored compartments are clearly designed to accommodate shocks on the far side.”

“Forgive me, _Paladin_ , but this isn’t a suit of _Brotherhood_ power armor. I modified this unit myself, including the frame, and I know for a fact that the actuators in the arms are in the right spot.”

While the two gearheads continued their bickering, MacCready sauntered up to the new onlookers. “Need something?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Nora replied. “I take it you’re assisting today?”

“Yeah, just for a little while. Cait said he was going stir crazy since his arm’s still in a sling. Won’t stop him from fixing the suit though.”

“Danse might,” she said with a chuckle. “He gets weirdly protective about these things.”

Nora shot a glance at Hancock who nodded in response. While she got into her best “general stance,” Hancock reached back to open the door and then closed it with a slam.

“Oh, General,” Sturges said. “I didn’t see you come in. Need somethin’?”

“Nora,” Danse greeted softly.

“I wanted to inquire about pipes, but it seems like you could use an extra set of eyes.”

MacCready snickered at their childish responses to being scolded. Downcast stares and shuffling feet somehow suited Sanctuary’s two burliest men when facing down Nora’s five foot five frame.

“Come on,” she said, holding out her hand for the actuator in Danse’s grip. “Hand it over.” He gave her the part and not long after, a peculiar glint flickered across her eye.

“Oh boy,” Piper exclaimed as she threw up her hands and headed for the exit. “Not this again. You brought it on yourselves.”

Nora said, “Let’s get this suit fixed.”

An hour later, Nora was up to her elbows in the T-45’s inner mechanisms. Danse applied outward pressure to the nearby plate so it wouldn’t clamp down on her arm, while Sturges provided guidance from his rolling shop chair. Hancock and MacCready smoked discretely in a far corner.

The exterior door opened and Preston stepped inside. “General.”

“Hey Preston,” Nora called, her attention on the wrench in her hand. “Need something?”

“Got a distress call from Abernathy Farm over the ham radio,” he reported. “They’ve had contact with raiders making demands for food. I was gonna go if you’re busy.”

“C’mon man,” Hancock drawled, “she just got back from talking to baby-face Maxson and changing his diaper. No offense.” Danse’s glare fizzled out. “You and your boys-”

“I’ll go,” Nora said, standing from the disassembled leg piece. “I want to. This sounds like the same band that slipped away from us a few weeks back. I’ll take care of it.”

“Alright. I’ll get on the radio and let them know you’re coming. It’d probably be wise to take someone with you.” A tip of his hat and he was out the door.

Danse levered the crowbar out of the armor frame and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his tank top.

“My bag’s still packed, boss,” MacCready said, putting out a cigarette. “You just say the word and we’ll head out.”

“You wanna leave already?” Hancock asked, wiping a smudge of grease from her chin. “Garvey and his boys could’ve handled it.”

“Abernathy’s not that far,” Nora replied, wiping her hands before putting on her Pip-Boy. “And it’s only a little past midday. We could be there and back before dinner.”

Sturges and Danse tidied the staggering mess the three of them made while Hancock ran his hands down Nora’s arms.

“You know I hate to see you go,” he said, placing a kiss on her temple. “But I understand. Be careful out there, alright?”

She took his hands in hers and gave them a light squeeze. “You don’t have to watch me go, you know.”

He tilted his head to the side.

“You could just come with me,” she explained.

His eyes widened. “Really? You don’t wanna take the kid?” Said kid grumbled at the nickname.

“That depends,” she mused. “How soon can you be ready to go?”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than Hancock bolted out the door.

“Don’t ever think I’ve seen him move that fast,” MacCready observed.

“Yeah. It’s been awhile since it was just the two of us. I think he’s missed it.” She paused. “Feed Dogmeat for me, okay? Make sure he doesn’t beg when they start cooking dinner.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

“Thanks for your help, General,” Sturges piped up. “We made more progress today than I had planned for the whole week. Stay safe out there.”

“Did you get a chance to go over your firearm today?” Danse asked.

“Yes, teacher,” she teased, “and you did an excellent job tuning it up, as always.”

“I’m only glad that I can continue to be of service. Now, go show those raiders what happens when they mess with us.”

In less than ten minutes, Nora and Hancock were geared up, supplied for the short trip, and headed across the bridge out of Sanctuary.

“Nick?” Hancock said.

“Hey you two. Heading out?” the old synth asked.

“Abernathy Farm needs help. But I haven’t seen you all day,” Nora said, hugging him. “When did you get in?”

“Just now,” he replied. “You kids have fun. I’ll see you when you get back.”

“We’ll be back this evening,” she called, running to catch up to Hancock. “Wow, it’ll be great seeing Nick again. It seems like he’s gone for weeks whenever he gets a new case.”

The synth detective was their closest friend. Hancock hummed his agreement.

“Ever since Ronnie took over at The Castle, Preston’s been back at Sanctuary. MacCready’s returned from DC. Now Nick too.”

“The whole family’s back together,” Hancock said.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

They walked on for a few minutes in silence, keeping a brisk pace while scanning for hostiles. For the last few months, the area surrounding Sanctuary – and especially the main roads between settlements – was mercifully clear. Perhaps the wild animals and even wilder men had come to respect the Minutemen’s land and connecting routes.

“Seems like old times, huh?” Nora threw over her shoulder, answered by a mischievously quirked brow. “You and me, out on the road? Getting the guns hot, the boots muddy?”

“Nah,” he replied, pulling her close for a quick embrace. “It’s better.”


	4. Chapter 4

These raiders had some serious brass balls. They were still there, hassling the farmers, by the time Nora arrived. As soon as the shooting started, they scattered pretty fast. Despite the days apart, Hancock and Nora’s fighting styles synced up perfectly – nearly untouchable.

Nearly.

Nora gently peeled away the antique layers of velvet, cotton, and linen from his shoulder.

“Are you going to be alright?” Connie asked as she set a bowl of water down at Nora’s side.

“It’s just a graze,” Nora answered, though her eyebrows remained pinched. “This should be fine.”

Connie gave her a kind smile. “Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to help. Once again, we owe you our gratitude.”

As she returned to her family, Nora finished exposing the wound. She looked over her medical supplies while picking dirt from under her fingernails.

“You’re scaring people,” Hancock muttered.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You’re getting twisted up over nothing,” he said, grabbing her twitchy hands. “Take a moment, love. Calm down. Look at me.” She did, but the pinched skin between her brows didn’t go away. “I’m okay. It was just a glancing blow. Hell, I’ve had worse falling out of bed in the morning.”

She visibly relaxed at this, stroking his cheek. The setting sun gave her hair a golden tint and highlighted the blush on her cheeks – absolutely mesmerizing.

“Alright,” she said. “Let me get you patched up.”

She cleaned the wound with a wet cloth, going much slower and gentler than needed but he didn’t complain. One square of clean gauze later, wrapped snug with fabric scraps, and he was as good as new.

When she was done, her eyes lingered on his exposed skin. Her fingers traveled the craters and valleys given to him by ghoulification. Up and down – scars, old bullet wounds, skin missing or thinner than a piece of paper. The press of her hands felt more soothing than any bandage, and he hummed his approval.

“See something you like?” he asked.

“Maybe.” Nora put away her supplies as he slipped back into his sleeves. “Anything else?” she asked.

“How ‘bout a kiss?”

She kissed him gently. Sitting in the dirt at Abernathy Farm, the cooling bodies of half a dozen raiders scattered about, it was perfect. He kissed her back.

When they finished and got to their feet, they joined in the task of helping pick over the bodies. After all, nothing went to waste in the wasteland.

A grumbling voice caught his attention. “Ugh. Can’t understand why anyone would touch one of those things, let alone get close to one. The only cure is a bullet to the head.”

It was a new face. Someone oblivious to the fact that the renowned General of the Minutemen was in a committed relationship with the devilishly ghoulish Mayor of Goodneighbor. People still made comments – most simply had the good sense to say them out of earshot. If the scavenger looked close enough, he might have seen the matching rings on their fingers. As it was, he seemed more than content to keep his distance from both of them.

Lucy Abernathy, the daughter of the farm patriarch and unwilling audience for the scavver’s complaints, shot him a wide-eyed, apologetic glance.

Nora appeared focused on picking through the dead men’s pockets, but the taught line of her shoulders spoke otherwise. “I hear it also cures bigotry,” she mumbled.

After they finished and bid the friendly farmers farewell, Nora made sure to give him a nice, long, shield-the-children’s-eyes kiss in full view of the scavver. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We’ll never get rid of prejudice by ignoring it.”

It was dark by the time they got on the road back to Sanctuary. In true Nora fashion, not only had they defended the farm from preying raiders, but they helped drag the bodies far enough away to burn. Then she volunteered to fix the brahmin pen where a wayward grenade blasted apart a corner post – and re-pen the wayward brahmin. Finally, Nora insisted on boosting the detection strength of their laser turrets. She just happened to be carrying the circuit boards necessary for the upgrade, an explanation he didn’t believe for a second.

But they were helping people. It felt good to help people. If he was at Nora’s side, it was all the better.

Unburdened and unhurried, the pair set a leisurely pace on the bumpy asphalt road leading home. They reminisced on past rescue missions, both daring and disastrous, and discussed upcoming changes to Sanctuary and a few other settlements. Under a cloak of darkness, everything was peaceful and quiet.

Nora spotted a bulky figure on the road up ahead and called out, “Hello, Strong!”

The super mutant cocked his head in their direction, a sledgehammer gripped by meaty hands. He jogged towards them with wide, lumbering steps.

“Kill human!”

They had less than a second to react.

After dodging the initial swing, they opened fire. Hancock’s buckshot was as effective as plastic pellets against the great brute, but he managed to catch the mutant in the eyes on his second shot. Red flashes from Nora’s laser rifle lit up the rampaging mutant, revealing crudely attached chest armor and large meat hooks worn like a necklace. Her shots were more efficient at burning through the thick hide, and she wordlessly took over cover fire while Hancock kneeled to retrieve a couple twelve-gauge slugs from his jacket pocket. As she backed up, he moved to flank. The mutant was growing more erratic, and the air smelled of sulfur and burning flesh.

His first slug went through the mutant’s thigh. In retaliation, he chucked the sledgehammer, narrowly missing the shotgun-wielding ghoul. Disarmed, the wailing monstrosity flailed his arms at anything that moved, blinded by rage and Nora’s lasers. Her red flashes stopped, most likely to reload her rifle while the mutant’s attention was on Hancock. His second slug found an unguarded piece of neck and tore out a chunk.

He didn’t need to see the blood – his nose told him he hit something vital. The screaming stopped and the mutant went down on one knee, a giant paw pressed to the wound. Hancock didn’t pause, reloading two more slugs into his shotgun. Flooded with adrenaline and flash blind in the darkness, a little movement was all he needed to lock onto the giant’s pinhead. He fired both barrels and the mutant fell over dead.

After a few tense moments, he reloaded his shotgun. The night was deathly quiet with the conclusion of their battle. Still flash blinded, Hancock scanned around for his partner.

“Just like old times, huh Nora?” Triumph colored his tone. “Don’t think I’ve had that much fun since the basement chem lab explosion in Charleston.” He whipped his head from side to side, still searching. “Where’d’ya go?”

He retraced his steps to where he saw her last, nearly tripping over the sledgehammer in the dark. Fear sunk into his chest. She wasn’t there.

“Nora?”

No response.

He searched the roadside where the mutant drove them back – not a sign of her. He checked behind trees where she might have taken cover – nothing. Calling her name until his voice strained, he finally found her in some tall grass, lying against the guardrail on the side of the road. He fumbled for the flashlight button on her Pip-Boy.

Her eyes were closed and she lay very still, but she was breathing. Though he couldn’t see any immediate injuries, he took great care in pulling her onto his lap.

“Nora?”

His hands skimmed up her sides and over her shoulders, checking for open wounds or broken bones. When he reached her head, his fingers came back crimson.

He swore under his breath and pulled a stimpak from his pocket. Two minutes after administration, she didn’t respond. He gave her another. No change.

He could no longer hear the sound of his own voice over the blood pounding in his head. He was shaking; Nora still hadn’t moved.

She needed help. Sanctuary. Curie!

He dropped his shotgun, picked her up, and ran.


	5. Chapter 5

He got back to Sanctuary in a slow-moving blur. The floodlights switched on as soon as he hit the bridge, breathlessly shouting for help and to open the gate. Bodies flowed around him but ushered him through as his legs carried him to the clinic. He caught glimpses of people he recognized – MacCready moving past him by the gate, Preston soon after. He didn’t let go of Nora until his brain registered the white walls of the clinic. Collapsed on the floor with his chest heaving and his arms burning, his focus zeroed in on the profile of Nora’s face on the exam table.

Nick was there, a hand on his shoulder. The synth may have asked him a question, but Curie called for the detective’s assistance and he joined her at the table right away. Codsworth floated in and out a couple times, carrying medical instruments and other supplies. Black spots danced in front of his eyes. He could hear Piper somewhere behind him, yelling for people to get back from the clinic doors. Dogmeat appeared in his periphery. Sniffing and whining and yipping, Curie pushed his paws off the table when she needed to get past. The dog paced until he stood beside Hancock. A string of barks, indignant and demanding, snapped him out of the trance.

As he regained his breath, the curious voices from outside faded. Nick and Curie spoke in hushed tones. After what felt like a long while, Nick walked over to where he sat. Another pair of arms joined Nick’s as he was hauled up and deposited in a plastic chair. It was Preston.

“You wanna tell us what happened?” Nick drawled, crouching down to eye level.

“Nora,” he said, his voice hoarse, “is she-”

“She’s fine, just unconscious,” the detective said, grabbing one of his fitful hands. “Can you tell us how it happened?”

“Super mutant,” he stammered. “On the road. Between here and Abernathy Farm.”

Preston leaned over to whisper in the ear of a nearby Minuteman.

“One minute she was okay, the next.” He swallowed. “I don’t know, Nick. I just lost track of her. Found her lying against a guardrail.” Nick listened patiently, squeezing his hand whenever his eyes grew distant. “Think she might’ve hit her head. Some blood.”

“Did you give her a stimpak?” Nick asked after a moment.

“Yeah. Two. I couldn’t wake her up. Nick, she’s gonna be okay, right?”

“Concussion,” he replied, glancing back towards the table. “At least, that’s what it looks like.” He paused. “How long ago did all this go down?”

“I,” Hancock began, “I don’t know. Jeez Nick, I don’t know. We weren’t that far.”

Dogmeat turned and ran outside as he tried to remember.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Nick said, his yellow eyes piercing. “I already told you she’s gonna be fine.”

He needed to see, to reassure himself. He stumbled up to the table where Nora lay prone.

Curie held a biometric scanner, making slow waving motions around Nora’s head. “She is unconscious,” she reported, “but ozerwise, in good condition. All of ‘er vital statistics are well wizin ze normal parameters. We found no signs of physical trauma besides a blow to ze ‘ead.” Her accent sometimes made it difficult to understand what she was saying.

“Her ballistic lining probably took most of the force from the impact,” Nick added from beside him. “It’s a good thing you gave her a stimpak as soon as you did.”

“Okay, she’s alright, then why hasn’t she waken up yet?” Hancock asked. Nick gestured to the doctor.

“Ze brain is an incredibly delicate organ. Preliminary scans show no bleeding or swelling, which would be our primary concerns, but Miss Nora may still have a fracture of ze skull. I do not have ze necessary equipment to diagnose such an injury.”

“Even if that’s the case, it’s not life-threatening,” Nick interjected, steering the ghoul away from overanalyzing the notion of a skull fracture. “Like Curie said, as long as we don’t see any fluid leakage or swelling, we really don’t have anything to worry about. We could give her something to wake her up, but letting her rest and recover on her own is probably the best option.”

“Yez,” Curie said, nodding along. “Waking ‘er now would only cause disorientation and moderate discomfort. If we allow ‘er to sleep, and continue to administer stimpaks to accelerate ze ‘ealing process, she may awaken wiz no furzer symptoms. In ze meantime, I will continue to monitor ‘er condition for any changes.”

Hancock nodded slowly. The tips of his fingers felt numb. A gentle bump to the back of the knees was all it took for him to collapse back into the plastic chair. It had been a long while since his last raw adrenaline crash. He held onto Nora’s hand – hopeful but still worried.

On his way out of the clinic, Nick laid a hand on his shoulder. “You did good, kid,” he said. “Nora’s tough. She’ll pull through this, I guarantee it.”

He held onto that promise, grasped it tightly like a lifeline, and pressed a kiss to Nora’s knuckles. Settling down to wait, he whispered, “I got nothing but time for you, love. I’ll be right here.”

Outside, the first rays of sunshine broke free from the horizon.


	6. Chapter 6

They moved Nora into her house, placed her in her own bed. Said it would be more comfortable, more private away from the dozens of concerned stares. Told him she would wake up, she was just resting. When? Soon. Let her rest. Let her heal. She would wake up.

Hancock waited by her bedside, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest. Her Pip-Boy sat on the table beside her. He considered turning the radio on for her.

Curie came in every half hour to check on Nora and administer more stimpaks. It was the only thing that alerted him to the passage of time. She performed scan after scan, cheerfully telling him that there was no bleeding or swelling inside her skull. Her vital signs were normal; she would wake up. After a while, she stopped relaying these updates, instead allowing him to sit and watch in silence. Nothing had changed.

Nick stopped by a few times, asked how he was doing. Hancock didn’t know how to respond to that question. The synth pulled up another chair, kept him company for a bit.

At least a dozen times, he fooled himself into believing he saw her waking – a twitch of the eyelids, a tightening of the lips. But whenever he jumped to his feet, shook her shoulder and said her name, she remained just as still as before. He sunk back into the chair. A little more lonely, a little more broken.

Sometimes, he found himself in another room of the house, staring at a wall. He’d feel guilty, go back to her room, and sit down in the chair while rubbing his thumb along her knuckles. The sight of his shotgun hanging from its set of pegs by the front door, while her pegs sat empty, carved a hole inside him. Apparently, Dogmeat searched the road between Sanctuary Hills and Abernathy Farm until he found the spot they were attacked. He brought back Nora’s laser rifle in his teeth. MacCready noticed what the dog was up to and followed him when he went out a second time. He recovered their bags while Dogmeat picked up Hancock’s shotgun from amongst the grass. Nora’s rifle was damaged. Danse was fixing it.

The dog was smart. Nora would probably skin the ghoul alive if she found out he left her favorite gun behind. The thought startled an uncomfortable bark of laughter from his chest.

Hours flew by. He still felt winded from sprinting. Their friends each made a brief visit, offering their support and wishing Nora well. Sturges, Piper, Deacon, Preston, Mama Murphy, Strong, Codsworth, Cait, Preston again, MacCready, Marcy Long. They all said the same thing – Nora’s tough, she’ll get better soon.

A couple hours after midday, Nick came in with Curie. “Come on, kid,” he said, pulling him to his feet. “Let’s get you some fresh air.” The synth detective’s hand was gentle but firm.

He squinted against the sunlight, holding up a hand to shield his eyes. The bustling neighborhood was unusually quiet. The sight of a dozen little gifts – all Nora’s favorite things – gathered around the front steps almost had him turning back. Packets of gumdrops, Blamco Mac and Cheese, fusion cells, little bunches of wild flowers, and a teddy bear probably left by a child with little else to give.

The skeletal hand of his friend drove him forward across the street. He was pushed into a chair, one of many that encircled the communal cooking fire, except the coals had long since gone cold.

Nick appeared by his side, holding a bowl of broth. “Here,” he said. “You need to eat.”

The yellowish brownish liquid looked about as appetizing as over-roasted bloatfly. He stared into the depressing bowl with the sensation that he was standing in front of a wall again.

“Not hungry, Nicky,” he said at length.

“Try,” Nick replied, taking a seat beside him.

He did. Tasteless.

“Why hasn’t she woken up yet?”

Nick hunched forward, hands folded in front of him. “She took a pretty good blow to the head, John. Something like that, recovering takes time.”

They watched as one of the neighborhood cats walked up the street. It disappeared into the thick vegetation when it reached the garden plots.

“Curie’s been sifting through a mountain of medical literature, Piper too” he went on. “Had to remind her that her body needed rest, at least for a few minutes. According to everything she’s found, Nora should come out of this naturally. Still, we would’ve thought she’d be awake by now.”

“Excuse me, Mayor Hancock?” One of their roving traders, Ruby, approached. “I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind signing this requisition order?” She held out a clipboard and pencil.

Nick took his bowl so he could stand. “What is it?” he asked numbly.

“Requisition order for fifteen laser muskets,” the redhead reported. “Delivery made to The Castle as we get our hands on them. My boss said I needed to get either you, or General Hall to sign off on it.” Her tone went from confident to apologetic.

His signature lacked its usual flair. He was accustomed to approving the occasional decision in Nora’s stead whenever she was away. He used to run a town (still did, technically), so Nora trusted him with making those calls. But doing it now, when she was only a few yards away, somehow felt wrong.

The trader gave him a respectful nod and turned to leave. Another settler left a handful of fusion cells by their door.

Nick sat him back down, encouraging him again to eat. Dogmeat lay at their feet, his ears down and tail sad.

A few minutes passed, and a group of farmers came up to ask for advice. Nick sent them away. A pair of fresh Minuteman recruits next. The old synth told them to go find Preston. Hancock sunk deeper and deeper into his bowl under the pitying and expectant stares, not drinking any of it. Finally, his long-time friend returned him to Nora’s side. As he passed the threshold, he noticed Nora’s laser rifle had been returned to its pegs by the door.

She was still, as if merely asleep. A gentle shake would rouse her from a pleasant dream, and she’d sleepily blink up at him. As he waited beside her, Hancock silently repeated Nick’s promise: Nora will recover. She will wake up.

After a few more checks, the air growing cooler outside, Nick returned with Curie.

“Hey uhh, we’re gonna try something,” he began. “Curie’s managed to synthesize a serum that should wake Nora up.”

Hancock made room for the doctor with the needle, closely watching Nora’s face as she injected the medicine. He held his breath. She withdrew the needle and placed a tiny piece of gauze over the injection site. Hancock sat back down in the chair, cradling Nora’s hand. Seconds passed in time with the clicking of Nick’s fans.

“Nothing’s happening,” he said, not taking his eyes off Nora.

“Now don’t panic,” Nick replied, “this stuff’s not instantaneous. It could take an hour before we see any change. Give it some time.”

Hancock squeezed Nora’s hand.

“We’ll be back to check on her soon.”

But when soon came and went, and Nora showed no signs of waking up, the panic he’d been too numb to acknowledge started to leak out.

“What do you mean, ‘you can’t give her another dose?’” he growled.

“Ze chemicals are meant to invoke a strong neurological reaction,” Curie explained. “In zis short amount of time, a second dose could overload ‘er system, potentially causing damage to ‘er ‘eart.”

“So why didn’t it work the first time?”

“We don’t know, John. Why don’t you reign in your temper so we can discuss where to go from here?” Nick admonished.

He paced around the room. Fear on top of fear manifested as anger, and it was finding one of the only outlets to escape.

“I’m listening,” he said, keeping his eyes on the two synths.

“We can’t administer another dose right now. Too risky.” Nick’s hands shook out a cigarette, but he didn’t light it. “Once enough time has passed for the drug to run its course through her system, we’ll try another, stronger dose. In the meantime, Curie and I are gonna start looking into intravenous nutrient infusion. If this concussion put her in some kind of coma, we’ll want to keep her in good shape.”

“’er neural activity is not indicative of a coma,” Curie interjected.

“Point is, we’re not gonna give up searching,” Nick said. “Piper wants to try smelling salts, though I doubt she’ll find any. The Brotherhood’s got medics – they still owe her a few favors. Deacon suggested that, if you can believe it. Nora could wake up any second, but if this turns into a long game, we should be ready.”

Hancock returned to the chair, listening to what his friend said but only hearing the worst. Nora could die. He might lose her forever.

Nick ushered Curie out of the room and placed a hand on his velvet-capped shoulder. “Your lady’s got the entire Commonwealth’s worth of resources at her disposal, and even more than that in the friends she’s made. She didn’t survive two hundred years of cryostasis _and_ the Institute to go out like this.”

The next time he looked up, the windows were dark. Hancock couldn’t tell if he dozed off or blacked out from the overwhelming grief. Nick left a lantern burning on the other side of the room. Nora’s Pip-Boy said it was past one in the morning. He was losing himself, and he told her as much.

Slowly, without consciously deciding to do so, he took off his coat, waistcoat, shirt, and boots, laying them neatly on the chair. Left only in his trousers, he crawled into bed beside Nora. He held her hand. Light from the lantern flickered across her face, so warm, so alive, so close. He touched her cheek. Alive. Not dead. He leaned over, pressed a kiss to her lips, then lay down. Watching. Waiting.

“I love you, Nora,” he whispered.


	7. Chapter 7

His body gave a sudden jolt, prompting him to look around. He was in bed, in a well-lit bedroom. Morning. Nora was there, but her eyes were closed. She appeared unchanged from yesterday, from the many hours he spent with rapt attention, waiting for any little sign.

“Nora?” he attempted, sitting up to gently shake her shoulder.

Nothing. The bad dream still wasn’t over.

He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he knew he lay beside her, watching, until at least three in the morning. Curie probably came in to check on her a few times. Nick too.

For all the time he spent watching her yesterday, this morning he had to turn his face away. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing exhaustion from his eyes. Worry. Grief. Emptiness.

He stood and retrieved his white linen shirt. It slid over his head and down his chest with a whisper of fleeting fingers. Still partially asleep, he flopped into the chair, which squeaked against the floor. As he bent down to retrieve his socks and boots, he caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye. He lifted his head, doubt tainting the angelic figure of his partner laid out on the bed.

But there! Her eyebrow really did twitch that time. He rose to his feet. And again – and she turned her head!

He knelt over her and cupped her cheek, his chest growing tight at the sour face she made. His other hand grasped hers.

“Nora?” he murmured, voice rougher than normal from sleep. “Nora, please open your eyes. Please baby, look at me.”

It was painfully slow, waiting the last few seconds with his heart banging against his lungs to spur them to move, until her eyes finally blinked open a crack. Relief stole away the last of his coherent thoughts. Relief to see those pre-war green eyes again.

Her eyes opened wider, lips parting. He had no words.

She screamed.

A full-body, ear-piercing shriek that simultaneously disorientated and shocked him into focus. Her lips were turned down, her eyes wide open, and the scream didn’t stop.

She pushed away from him, fingers clawing at the bed sheets as he tried to soothe her panic with an outstretched and unthreatening hand, tried to tell her that she was safe.

Her back hit the headboard but she kept on backing up, falling off the bed a moment later. Hancock reached to catch her but she swatted at his hands. Using her feet, she pushed herself into a corner, screaming all the way.

He followed, landing on his knees and trying every comforting word in his vocabulary. The look she gave him next was one that would haunt him for years. It broke his heart.

Fear.

“Nate!” she yelled, pressed tight into the corner. “Nate help! Help! Don’t touch me! Nate! Nate!”

She was afraid – not of the world, not of the things that haunted her dreams – of him. It was the one look he never wanted to see in her eyes. Nora, his Nora. The Nora that looked at him with so much love, never judging, always patient and kind and good. He could take anger or indifference, but fear – true raw terror – cut him deeper than any blade.

An entire posse of their friends burst into the room, some even carrying weapons. They immediately flocked to Nora where she sat screaming on the floor, her arms defensively held in front of her face. Screaming for help, for Nate.

Nick and Piper filtered to the front of the group, crouched low and speaking soothing words, while Hancock slowly backed away as if detached from both brain and body. Nora’s wailing sobs filled the tiny, overcrowded bedroom. She curled in on herself, weakly calling for a husband that wouldn’t come.

Her anguish filled his emptiness until he could take no more. Cait and MacCready crowded the doorway, but he squeezed by them into the hallway. Lost, he backed himself into the nearest section of wall and collapsed to the floor, trembling.

Inside, Nick and Piper were having no luck getting through to Nora, though she appeared to be losing the energy to go on screaming.

“Nate,” she sobbed. “Where’s Nate?”

The entire room fell silent, apart from her hiccupping.

“What? What was that name you said?” Nick asked.

“Nate. My husband,” she sobbed, wiping her eyes. “What are you? Some kind of robot?”

“Well, something like that,” he replied, adjusting his stance. “We’re your friends, Nora. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Mum?” Codsworth called from the living room.

“Codsworth? Codsworth, in here!”

The crowd moved aside to allow the robot butler entry to the bedroom.

“Why mum, you’ve recovered!”

“Codsworth, where’s Nate?”

“Oh umm, well, sir,” the bot fumbled, sorrow leaking into his tone.

“And who are these people?”

“Why, they’re some of your closest friends, of course! That’s Miss Piper Wright,” he said, pointing with his pincer. “Mister Nick Valentine. Mister Deacon, with the umm, glasses. Mister Preston Garvey. Miss Cait, and Mister Robert MacCready.”

She paused. “I don’t know you,” she said tightly, scanning the blank faces in the room. “Any of you.”

She didn’t recognize him. Another tremor traveled up Hancock’s body. The one person who knew him better than anyone else, both inside and out, and she hadn’t recognized him.

“Why are you all here?” she demanded. “What are you doing in my house? My,” she trailed off, then wailed, “my house! What happened to my house? My, it’s- baby. Baby! I have a baby! Shaun!”

Everyone in the room moved as she tried to leap forward. Nick and Piper held her arms.

“Shaun! My baby! Please,” she pleaded through tears, “please let me see my baby. Let me go to him. Codsworth. Nate. Shaun!” Her desperate pleas dissolved into weeping. In the doorway, MacCready took a knee, wiping tears from his eyes.

Directly in front of Hancock stood the door leading to what used to be a nursery. Now, it was a storage room. An armory. Filled with bits and baubles, spare guns, collectibles, old books, and the few precious remaining pieces of her old life – all she had left of Nate and Shaun.

“Nora?” Piper said when she quieted. “Shaun, he.” She swallowed. “He’s not there.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice painfully small.

There was a pause. Nick was the one to step up. “It seems you’ve suffered some amnesia. You’ve obviously forgotten certain things. It pains me to say this, Nora, believe me, but they’re gone. Both of them.”

Nora immediately broke down into hysterical bawling. She clung to Piper, mourning her husband and son all over again.

But Hancock remembered. He was the one Nora clung to when she returned from the Institute – clean, sweet smelling, well fed, and utterly devastated. Sixty years of her son’s life gone. He was there to pull her close when she suddenly remembered Nate, missing him and weeping for his loss too. And he tracked her down – halfway across the Commonwealth – when the Institute when up in a puff of dust, nearly having to tackle her to get her to stop, where she wailed the death of her son in the street and no man or monster (save for him) dared approach her.

That same drive pushed him to go to her now – to hold her like he did then. But he couldn’t. He was paralyzed, frozen by that look of fear as his heart kept breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. While she wept, he clutched tightly at the ring on his finger.

It sounded like she could go until she lost her voice, but Nick gently interrupted her. “Nora?” he prodded, waiting patiently until he had enough of her attention. “I know it’s painful, but could you tell us the last thing you remember? We just want to help you.”

She let out a few more hiccupping sobs. “I remember, I was getting ready for bed. Nate was still up. Writing a letter, I think, to someone he hadn’t heard from since Alaska. Codsworth had just checked on Shaun,” she whimpered. “We were talking about doing family-themed costumes for Halloween. Nate, he wanted us to go as the three bears from the Goldilocks story. Codsworth was going to help me sew.”

“Oh mum,” Codsworth added, his voice modulator wobbling.

“We were even going to make a wig so you could be Goldilocks. I still wasn’t sold on the idea. I went to sleep.” She paused. “Then this, this _thing_ was shaking me awake.”

Ice crawled into Hancock’s stomach.

“I don’t even know what it was. It looked like a monster – a real one. It was _touching_ me with its disgusting hands. I screamed but, but Nate wasn’t there. And then,” she hiccupped, “and, and-” and went right back to weeping. Weeping a husband lost with no explanation, a son she would never meet, and a time period yanked out from under her.

Hancock couldn’t stand to listen anymore. He couldn’t stand the sympathetic glances they kept giving him. Stumbling to his feet, he shot out the door.

Standing outside was like being trapped in a dream. The sky was the wrong color and the air was rough against his skin. Barefoot and bleary, he turned a few heads as he wandered in a random direction. He came to in the shade of a house, sitting up against another wall. Dogmeat’s cold nose pressed against his hands, the faithful canine’s tail slowly thumping on the beaten grass.

He grabbed the dog, hugging it close to his body. Dogmeat whined softly. The gold band on his finger clinked against an engraved tag on Dogmeat’s collar. The tag read: “If lost, please return to Nora Hall – 111 Sanctuary Hills.”

Hancock squeezed the dog tighter and sobbed into his fur.


	8. Chapter 8

Nora stepped out of her pre-war house an hour later. Surrounded on all sides by her friends, she gazed upon the settlement built by her own two hands with tears in her eyes. She gasped at the destruction, seeing only loss, fearful of every new face.

Hancock stood, Dogmeat at his heel. Seeing her in such a vulnerable state grew his drive to be near her.

As soon as she caught sight of him approaching, she shrieked, pulling against the hands that held her up. She screamed to get away, to not let it touch her again.

Her fear killed the drive inside him, and he stood in the middle of the street as she cried, unable to bridge the gap.

Piper and a few others rushed to his defense, trying to reassure her that he was a friend. He wouldn’t hurt her.

“No no no no no,” she repeated through tears, shaking her head and trying to pull away. Dogmeat made his way to her side, but she didn’t pay him any attention.

Nick broke away from the escort party and seized Hancock by the arm, dragging him away. “Come on, kid.”

For the first few yards, Hancock allowed himself to be led away, walking backwards. She seemed to calm as the distance grew. However, as he got farther and farther away, a small note of his own panic steadily increased until he was lightly pulling against the synth. When she was almost out of sight, his friend was having a difficult time keeping a hold on him.

A short distance from the wooden bridge leading out of Sanctuary, they stopped.

“Let me go,” he pleaded weakly. “She, she needs me there. I gotta help her.”

“Calm down for a second, she’s not going anywhere.” He waited. “You ducked out of there before I got a chance to talk to you. How’re you holding up?”

“I- she didn’t recognize me, Nick,” he said, rubbing his bare head. “I don’t know what to do. She didn’t recognize me.”

“She didn’t recognize any of us, apart from Codsworth,” Nick said. “I think she’s suffering from retrograde amnesia, probably caused by that blow to the head. She can clearly recall going to law school, her cases, newspaper articles, but she has no memory of the bombs, the vault, or anything that happened afterwards.”

“Will she ever,” Hancock said, his voice hitching, “be the same?”

“In my experience, whenever someone loses their memory, they usually get it back. Sometimes it happens gradually – a sight, a sound, maybe even a smell can spark a certain memory, and over time, they slowly build it back up. In other cases, it all comes back at once, maybe even without any triggers. We wanted to see if showing her around the settlement would bring back any memories.”

“And did it?”

The detective scuffed his shoe. “Well, aside from waking up, not yet.”

“What if,” he said, choking on the words, “what if she never gets it back? What if she never remembers?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Nora we all know is still in there, I’m sure of it. Until then, we’ll keep her safe, reteach her a few things she needs to survive out here.” The synth laid a hand on his shoulder. “And, as hard as it’ll be for you, I think you should probably keep your distance for the time being.”

His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

“Look, we all know you two are over the moon for each other. No one’s arguing that. But right now, for whatever reason, she’s scared of you. Traumatizing her’s not gonna bring her memory back any faster.”

Trembling and swallowing sobs, he nodded. “I feel like I’ve lost her, Nick.”

“We’ll get her back,” he replied confidently. “Don’t worry.”

“What about,” Hancock suggested, “Doctor Amari? If her memories are still in there, she could help her get ‘em back.”

“I had the same thought,” the old synth agreed, lighting a cigarette. “No one in the Commonwealth has a better understanding of brains and memory than Amari. It’d be worth a shot, if Nora doesn’t remember anything on her own.”

“We could take her now,” he urged.

“That probably wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Why not?”

Nick blew out a cloud of smoke. “In her mind, this is her first time seeing the Commonwealth. Everything’s new and scary compared to her pre-war life. We can’t expect her to jump back into her role as general, or pick up where she left off with Maxson. She needs to be eased back into things, basic survival first. Marching her through downtown Boston is a little extreme for her first day.”

But she did it before, a little voice in the back of Hancock’s head whispered. Maybe not on day one, but she made that march before – and she was all alone. She wasn’t alone this time.

“When?” he asked, resigned to keep waiting.

“We can take her to Goodneighbor as soon as she’s stable,” Nick replied. “That’s if she doesn’t get her memories back on her own, but the chances of that-”

“Tomorrow,” Hancock insisted.

Nick conceded to his distraught friend with a nod. “Alright. If she doesn’t remember anything before then, we’ll head out early tomorrow morning.”

After a short silence, he spoke. “It’s like she emerged from the vault all over again, and it’s killing me that I can’t help her.”

“Me too, kid. Me too.”


	9. Chapter 9

Hancock spent the rest of the morning skulking in an empty pre-war house. It was on Nora’s list of things to get done in Sanctuary, but the mostly missing roof had kept anyone from claiming it in the meantime. Nick brought him the rest of his signature outfit, as well as his shotgun. Piper and a few others stopped in to offer their sympathies and encouragement, but he had no use for either of them. He only wanted his love back by his side. As he waited, he twisted the ring sitting on his finger.

Shortly after seeing him in the street, Nora and friends retreated indoors. Nick took the opportunity to address the rest of the settlement and get everybody up to speed.

Backed up by Preston, he confirmed the news that Nora had awoken. He then told the crowd of listeners that she had lost a portion of her memory. To her, the last year simply hadn’t happened.

Nick and Preston answered the many concerns as best they could, reminding everyone that they had been fine while she was out of action the past couple days. It was simply going to take a little while longer for her to recover. With most of Nora’s duties divided up among the most capable individuals, and those that couldn’t be reassigned simply put on hold, Nick moved on to the final announcement.

“Since the onset of her amnesia,” he told them, “Nora has developed an uncontrollable and violent fear of ghouls. To that end-”

“Impossible,” one of the ghoul settlers spoke up. “Nora’s the most accepting, non-judgmental person we know. She helps everybody – ghoul, human, synth, super mutant, even Brotherhood. There’s no way she’s suddenly a ghoul-hater!”

“It’s not that she suddenly became prejudiced,” Nick shouted over the upset crowd. “She’s just scared. It’s going to take her a while to warm up to us. _All_ of us.”

“Right now, we want to make the adjustment as unstressful for her as possible,” Preston took over. “We need your support and understanding, and we ask that any ghouls currently living in Sanctuary to temporarily swap duties and relocate to the eastern side of the settlement.”

This riled up a few disapproving voices from the crowd, but Nick settled them down. “This is just for a few days. Nora’s given us everything we have here, and she’s in a real vulnerable state right now. Do it for her.”

The group of people dispersed to do what was asked of them. Nick called forward Nora’s close friends for a more focused discussion. Awake after his nighttime watch, Danse joined them. Hancock walked over when he was called, Dogmeat sitting at his feet with droopy ears. His favorite person hadn’t given him so much as a head pat.

“We’re all gonna need to step up to keep this place safe and running until Nora’s memories return,” Nick said. “That being said, we have a plan to hopefully kick-start a few of those memories. Curie, Piper, and Codsworth are with her now, so I’ll pass this along to them later.”

“What is the plan?” Danse asked.

“The plan is,” Nick explained, “to utilize the loungers in The Memory Den in Goodneighbor to physically reconnect Nora to her missing memories.”

“You think it’ll work?” MacCready asked.

“Doctor Amari’s done some impossible things regarding memory and the brain,” the old synth reminded them, “not to mention extracting vital information regarding the Institute from a dead man’s half-robot gray matter. This should be easy.”

“It’s worth a try,” Cait said. “Nora didn’t give up when one of us asked for her help.”

Many heads around the circle nodded.

“If her memories don’t start coming back on their own, we’ll head out for Goodneighbor early tomorrow morning,” Nick went on. “We’ll be traveling in a larger group than normal, but we want to make sure nothing we run across gets anywhere near her. Nora will effectively be a noncombatant.”

“But we don’t want to leave Sanctuary undefended,” Danse said, the mechanisms of his power armor humming.

“We won’t,” Preston assured him.

“Even if we all took off, there’s more than enough Minutemen to keep up patrols and monitor the automated defenses,” Nick said. “So if you hear your name, you’re on the team to escort Nora: MacCready, Danse, Hancock of course, and myself. Piper and Curie are going with us too.”

Dogmeat barked.

“Sure boy, you can come along if you want. Preston and Codsworth will stay here while we’re gone. Everyone good with that?”

“Hey uhh,” Deacon asked, “how about me boss?”

“Deacon, I’m putting you and Cait in charge of Strong,” Nick said. “Where is he by the way?” Deacon shrugged.

“It was clearing rocks from the riverbed during my patrol,” Danse spoke up with a sneer. “You could start looking there.”

“Thank you, Danse,” the older synth said with a slightly unfriendly tone. Turning his attention back to Deacon and Cait, he continued, “When you find him, take him for a long walk. Given Nora’s reaction to Hancock, I’m sort of glad our big green friend wasn’t around when she stepped outside.”

“Aw, c’mon Mom,” Deacon whined, already strolling away to retrieve his pack. “I babysat him yesterday, and the day before that.”

“Get geared up, have some fun, just keep him out of sight,” Nick said.

Cait stuck her pinkies in her mouth and whistled. While Preston and MacCready rubbed their ringing ears, Strong appeared down the road, coming toward them at a gallop.

“Learned that little trick from Nora,” Cait bragged.

Danse held his rifle higher across his chest as the mutant came to a stop.

“Who need Strong?” he bellowed.

“Strong,” Nick said, “we need you to go on a little trip. Deacon and Cait will be joining you.”

“Not want Strong to guard set met? Uhh,” the mutant said, rubbing his head. Nora was teaching him some longer words, but her lessons only seemed to stick when she was the one talking to the big guy. “Guard set. Guard, uhh. Here. Strong guard here! Keep tiny human safe.”

“No Strong,” Nick argued carefully, “we need you to not guard here, just for a little bit. You’ll keep Nora safe by killing dangerous things farther away.”

“Keep tiny human safe,” Strong bellowed. “Go and find things to kill.”

“Come on ‘ya big lug,” Cait said as she led the mutant to where Deacon waited with his gear. “We’ll have us some fun an’ we’ll be helping Nora make the area safer.”

“Well, that’s about all I had to say,” Nick addressed them. “Unless anyone would like to add something? No? Alright, let’s get to it.”

The group dispersed but Nick grabbed Hancock before he could wander off.

“You got that look in your eye, John,” the synth cautioned. “I need you to stick around, in case Nora comes to her senses.”

He shrugged off his friend. “It’s best if I keep out of sight, right? Besides, just need to go kill some things.”

“Mm, I’d ask if you wanted some company, but something tells me you don’t.”

“There’s only one person I want at my side right now.”

Hancock roamed the riverbanks, walking the wide circumference of the lake and following the water past Red Rocket and down into the woods. Trusty shotgun in hand, he blasted any irradiated insect or critter that crossed his path. He told himself that he was still protecting Nora in a roundabout way. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough “threats” to distract him for very long, and he found his thoughts getting more distressing with each step.

He lifted his shotgun at a radstag doe, but didn’t fire. The creature looked up at him with dull brown eyes. Resting on the trigger, his finger felt locked. A yearling pushed through the brush and joined the doe. In his head, Nora’s voice cooed at how cute the baby was.

He fired the shot into the sky, sending the skittish animals running. It would be another hour before he found another aggressive bug to splatter.

Night was falling when he returned to Sanctuary. After making sure Nora was safely inside, he approached the communal dinner stewing over a blazing fire. A few conversations hushed as he sat down. Those that continued said the same thing. Everyone was worried about Nora. They hoped she recovered soon. She seemed so scared, so fragile.

MacCready appeared at his side, offering a hot bowl of radstag stew, but he waved it off. He couldn’t escape the whispers plaguing his thoughts. Standing, he left the dinner circle, intent to walk the neighborhood for the next couple hours.


	10. Chapter 10

The moon was a small sliver in the sky, floating in and out of the clouds above Sanctuary. Accompanied only by the night guards, Hancock rose from his seat beside the dying fire and made his way to the house Nora was staying in.

Preston told him she didn’t want to go back to her old house, so they moved her down the road where most of her companions stayed. It sat on the roundabout, and was the largest pre-war house left standing.

“It’s funny,” the colonel said, “she did the same thing almost a year ago. After she rescued us from Concord, and helped us get settled here, she was gone for a long while. We left her house alone, since Codsworth seemed attached to it, and some of us thought it would be an invasion of privacy. When she came back, she insisted she didn’t want her old house – said it was too depressing. So we cleared our junk out of the house across the street so she could stay there. But after a couple nights, she stormed up to me again, told me she was moving back into her old house. Even though it was depressing, she said the walls were where she expected them to be, instead of hitting her in the face. She said, ‘I changed my mind. Sue me.’ I think that was shortly before you showed up.”

The house was mostly dark, but a dim light shone through the living room windows. Hancock cracked the front door, spotting Nick, Piper, MacCready, Curie, Preston, but no Nora. Satisfied that she was asleep somewhere deeper in the house, he pushed open the door and went in. Everyone was still awake, quietly discussing plans for the journey tomorrow – the best route to take, how to position themselves to efficiently defend Nora. They had half a dozen sleeping bags set up around the living room. Noticing him, they paused.

“Monsieur Hancock,” said Curie.

“She asleep?” he asked.

“Yeah, about an hour ago,” Nick replied. “You doing okay?”

“Fine, just checking up on her.” He paused. “I probably don’t need to ask, but she didn’t remember anything today, did she?”

Piper shook her head.

“Thought so,” he murmured. “I won’t stick around, just wanted to see her.”

“Ah, before you go in there,” Nick said, stopping him.

“She was having trouble falling asleep,” Piper jumped in. “So she requested a little company, so she wouldn’t be alone.”

When Nora padded into the large living room, exhausted from the day and tired of tossing on the lumpy mattress, her friends looked up with sympathy.

“Can’t sleep?” Nick asked.

She shook her head, arms hugging her body.

“Anything we can do?” Piper added.

Nora shifted on her feet, eyeing the cracked and discolored linoleum tiles. After a few minutes of visible internal deliberation, she whispered, “I’m all alone.”

In a room full of people unsure how to respond, Piper spoke up with the obvious sentiment. “We’re here for you.”

“I’m not leaving anytime soon,” MacCready added.

“Nor I,” said Danse.

“Hear, hear,” Preston joined in.

“No, I mean,” Nora said with a weak sigh, raking hair back from her face. “I know you said I need to get some sleep so I can be ready for tomorrow, and I _am trying_. But whenever I start to fall asleep, I’ll reach out for Nate, and then I bolt up because he’s not there.” A couple tears fell on her cheeks, and she wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “It’s not fair. He’s just gone.”

Nick and Piper approached to console her, but the mention of Nate eventually had her collapsing to the floor with trembling shoulders.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye,” she sobbed. “I can’t do this alone. I just want him back.”

“Curie?” Nick tossed over his shoulder.

“I can give you somezing to ‘elp you sleep,” she suggested.

Nora shook her head. “I don’t want any drugs,” she hiccupped.

“What do you want?” Piper asked patiently.

Nick added, “We can’t help unless you tell us how.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” Nora whimpered. “I just wanted one more night with Nate. I know he’s gone and I need to accept that, but I can’t. Not yet. Even if it’s not real, I want to wake up one more morning thinking that Nate is there. I can deal with it tomorrow, but I just want one more night.”

Nick waited a few moments as she wiped her eyes. “Then,” he said slowly, “one of us will stay with you.”

Timidly, she asked, “Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Piper said. “We’re your closest friends. Whatever you need.”

When she appeared indecisive about the proposition, Nick interjected with a gentler tone. “You don’t have to say yes. I know you still don’t remember, but trust me – you’re safe with us. No one’s gonna take advantage of you. If you want one more night, we’ll try to give it to you. Everyone’s willing to help.” The room gave a single nod in unison. “Is there anyone you’d feel more comfortable with?”

Her eyes flickered over Nick’s shoulder as she chewed her lip. The detective turned his head to look.

“Me?” Danse questioned, eyebrows shooting up. Everyone else seemed just as shocked.

“I’m sorry,” Nora mumbled, ducking to hide her embarrassment. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“We want to help you,” Nick encouraged her. “You said you wanted one more night. We understand. Take it.”

After some thought, Nora turned her attention back to the paladin and asked quietly, “Is that okay with you?”

“I,” Danse stammered, rising from where he had been reclined on his sleeping bag. He approached her slowly. “If you would like me to,” he swallowed, “keep you company,” he paused, gauging the reaction of the faces around the room, “to help you fall asleep, I would not consider it an inconvenience.”

Nora nodded, her shoulders hunched. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Hancock listened with an almost cold detachment.

“Just so you’re prepared,” Nick explained. After a few seconds, he nodded his understanding.

The hallway was fairly dark, lit only by the glow that escaped the main room. He made his steps quiet as he approached the smallest bedroom at the end. On a narrow bed, pushed against the far wall, Nora slept. She was frowning, tear tracks staining her cheeks. Her sleeves were also damp. At her back, curled against her, was Danse. He was not asleep. Hancock never knew the former paladin to ever appear terrified, but it was written all over his face in that moment. Terrified and distressedly apologetic, Danse’s eyes flicked from Hancock to the woman sleeping in his arms and back again.

Hancock got as close as he dared, kneeling to be level with Nora’s sleeping face. Though he wasn’t thrilled with her choice of human-synth teddy bear, he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with Danse. Once, a long time ago, Nora confided in him that Danse shared almost the same build as her late husband. She also saw a little bit of him in the paladin’s eyes and jawline. She’d adored Nate. The man was a hero, a saint.

He spent a few minutes looking into the face of the woman he loved. Though she was close enough to reach out and touch, Hancock stayed perfectly motionless. He was still stuck in a dream. Everything was supposed to be better when Nora woke up, but the world only tilted farther beneath his feet.

She was so beautiful; he didn’t want to leave her. But Nick was right. The sight of him terrified her. So he stood up, slipped out of the room, and walked out into the night.


	11. Chapter 11

Hancock slept on his own that night, in a dark, empty house. He couldn’t bring himself to go back to Nora’s home and the bed they shared. Unable to sleep longer than a few hours, he got up and grabbed his gear, replenishing his ammo from the storeroom. The big house on the roundabout was still dark, but he approached anyway and cracked the door. A quick tip of his head and Nick followed him outside.

“Little early to be taking off, isn’t it?” the synth asked.

“I’m going ahead of you guys to Goodneighbor,” he said. “Gonna make sure the roads are clear and let ‘em know you’re coming.”

“Sure, sure,” Nick said, lighting a cigarette. “Makes sense.”

“What route are you taking?”

“Oh uhh, follow the road skirting Concord, down to the diner and the drive-in. Head east along the lake till we reach Covenant. Across the Tucker Memorial Bridge, then follow the 93 overpass to Bunker Hill. From there, just south into the city and on to Goodneighbor. I think we’ll follow the west side of the peninsula, keeping to the boardwalk and water’s edge as far as we can.”

Hancock nodded along, following the path in his head. They were playing it safe, hitting as many friendly spots along the way as possible. Downtown would still be a problem. He might have to take care of that.

“Hey, don’t go leaping into a super mutant nest on your own,” Nick said. “We already sent word out to Radio Freedom for any Minutemen in the area to help clear the way. MacCready and Danse will also be roaming ahead of us to scout the area and wipe out any remaining hostiles. You focus on getting word to Doctor Amari. If we move quick, and don’t run into too much trouble, we could make Goodneighbor by noon.”

“Got it,” Hancock said, securing his bag.

“We’re going to get her memory back,” Nick assured him. “You never know. She could wake up this morning and be back to her old self again. If that happens, she’ll be leading the charge to Goodneighbor to come get you. Heh, Danse’ll be in the doghouse with a sore face for the next week if she wakes up to anyone other than you.” He couldn’t help but smirk at the mental image painted by the synth’s words. Nick lowered his tone. “Nora loves you. Even that metal-head respects your relationship, and that’s saying something. What you two have, there’s no way she could forget about it forever.”

He took heart at his old friend’s words. They could make it work. If that’s what it took to hold Nora in his arms again, to see love in those jade green eyes, he’d level Boston.

“Keep her safe, Nick,” he said.

“Count on it.”


	12. Chapter 12

Hancock stood at the window in the State House, watching as a troop of companions led Nora through the gate. Nick’s estimate was spot on – it was just a little after noon.

Nora observed his town with poorly disguised trepidation. Perhaps it was the journey here, weighing on her. Perhaps it was the lack of people.

As soon as he stepped through the gate, Hancock set to work getting everything in place for her arrival. His first stop: Fahrenheit and the heads of the Neighborhood Watch. Pulling from his personal stash, he arranged a big party at The Third Rail with free liquor and chems. Tasking the Neighborhood Watch with spreading the word, he set off for The Memory Den. He kicked out their small collection of clientele. Irma and Amari were more than understanding when he explained the situation. Kent said he’d stay in his little room until he heard the all clear. The Third Rail wasn’t really his kind of place, he explained, crumpling his fedora, and he’d do anything for the Shroud.

He returned outside to nearly empty streets, the last few drifters being herded towards the bar. Unused to the eerie quiet, a handful of his guys collected in the main square. Hancock directed his fellow ghouls to join the party, keep order, and keep everyone inside. A couple of the smoothskins would patrol the town, while he sent the rest into the city to clear some of the nearby hotspots. He promised KL-E-0 a favor (whatever that meant) to go with them. Daisy closed up shop for the day, content to bunker down with a cup of tea and a good book. Ever the mothering soul, she gave him some words of encouragement and a rare box of cinnamon candy.

As she read the signs hanging over the closed shops and conversed with her companions, Hancock wondered if the sights sparked anything in her memory. His proud little slum had become her home away from home, though one of many, ever since she fell for its slumlord mayor. He wondered what she would say, now, if he met her at the gate the same way he did the first day he saw her – blood on his knife, Finn’s body at his feet, and a cocky grin. She’d probably turn around and march right out the gate.

When she disappeared from view, guided to The Memory Den, he took a deep breath. Amari would fix this. The Commonwealth needed Nora. He needed Nora.

He slipped into The Memory Den on stealthy feet, his approach more befitting a thief than the building’s proprietor. Hearing voices, he determined they were too faint to be in the main parlor. Irma must have already guided them down to the basement. He kept his steps light as he descended the creaky staircase, the voices growing louder. Dogmeat sulked in the stairwell, tail thumping weakly when he saw the ghoul. Beside the doorframe, his back to the wall, he eavesdropped on Nick reassuring Nora that the memory lounger was perfectly harmless. They’d be monitoring her the whole time. Though she sounded unsure, she agreed to the procedure if it meant restoring her lost memories.

When the clear dome sealed in place and her eyelids sagged, Hancock was immediately pressed against the glass.

“I’m loading the program now,” Amari reported. MacCready sat, head bowed and foot bouncing rapidly, while Piper twisted her cap in her hands. Curie stood with the doctor, fascinated by the process and monitoring readings from the machine. No one spoke as the doctor typed then paused, typed then paused.

“There seems to be a problem,” she announced after a while.

Striding over to her controls, Hancock looked over the doctor’s shoulder, her screen displaying lines of code. “What’s wrong?” he grumbled.

She explained, “I am accessing the part of Nora’s brain that deals with recently formed memories. We would expect to see something that happened in the last three to nine days. However, when I lock on to an intact cluster and run them through the simulation, this is all that comes up.”

A few keystrokes later, the screen toggled to a first-person view of grass and a yellow house. A shiny new Corvega rolled down the street, its occupant waving as it passed. To her right, an automated bassinet rocked newborn Shaun.

“I’ve got the ice,” a male voice exclaimed. Bursting from the front door and holding a plastic cup, the dark-haired man rushed over to kneel in front of them. He examined the baby, fingers rattling the frozen cubes. “Are the hiccups gone?” He sounded somewhat disappointed.

“I told you,” Nora’s voice playfully admonished, “they go away on their own.”

Nate sighed, putting the cup down. It looked like he was reaching for the screen, though it was really her dream face. “I am so glad you know how to do this.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, honey,” she replied. “Your parenting instincts are spot on. The panic-all-the-time phase goes away soon, I promise.”

He kissed her cheek. In the pod, Nora’s lips formed a trembling smile and tears ran down her face.

“That’s not right,” Hancock said. “That’s her life before the bombs. We need her to remember something that happened recently.”

“I’ve never had this problem before,” the doctor said. “According to the chemical signatures in her brain, these should be some of her most recent memories.”

“Hm, try looking somewhere else, doc,” Nick suggested.

“Alright. Let me fade out the current memory and initiate another one.”

The screen gradually transitioned to a crowd of people, all dressed in crisp suits and fancy evening dresses. Round tables decorated in red, white, and blue were scattered among the many bodies in the large ballroom. People came up to Nora to clasp her hand and compliment her gown, making small talk about the party and their “handsome boys.”

“That’s still something that happened over a year ago,” Hancock said.

“Two hundred eleven, counting her time on ice,” Nick added. “Is it possible those two hundred years are interfering with her memory timestamps?”

“They weren’t an issue when we connected her to the loungers before,” the doctor replied.

“Yeah, but she wasn’t the one in the driver’s seat,” Nick said. “She was just along for the ride. Kellogg and I were sort of controlling that one.”

“Actually, we plugged her into the loungers a couple months ago,” Amari observed. “Even with two hundred years of cryostasis, we found the memory she wanted to revisit right away.”

“Really? What was the memory?”

Hancock rolled his eyes. “She lost her favorite pair of vice-grips at a settlement, but couldn’t remember which one. We were in town so she used a lounger to retrace her steps and find out where she left them.”

“Do you have that memory downloaded anywhere?” Piper piped up. “I know it’s not much, but looking for a pair of vice-grips would give her undeniable proof of the life she forgot.”

“Unfortunately, no,” Amari replied. “Putting aside the fact that the data storage requirements involved would greatly outpace our capabilities, it would be a gross violation of privacy to keep our clients’ memories. Normally, we aren’t even monitoring the memories themselves, just the state of the occupant.”

“Her memories gotta be in there somewhere,” Hancock growled.

“I can go through more, but they all appear to be similar to what you’ve already seen,” Amari said, tapping on the terminal. Images scrolled on the screen – the inside of a car, a park, a scary movie. “I’ve found one more memory. It appears very strong and clear.”

When the screen changed again, it showed a blur. It gradually focused in on a face. Hancock’s face. Then Nora screamed. The screen tilted, bouncing as Nora backed up erratically until she tumbled out of bed. Nick rubbed his forehead while Piper cupped her hands over her mouth. In the pod, her face was scrunched up as if in pain. He watched his own expression go from confused to hurt and turned away from the screen. Watching through her eyes, he was reminded of the reason for her fear. He saw a gruesome, disfigured monster.

“Shut it down,” he said as Nora’s friends rushed into the room.

“John, I,” Doctor Amari stammered.

“I said shut it down,” he repeated. The memory faded. He paced back to the lounger, pressing his hand against the glass.

“That’s all there was?” MacCready asked. “Why didn’t it work?”

“I’m sorry,” Amari said, “I cannot access her post-war life. The memories simply aren’t there.”

“So that’s it then,” Hancock murmured, tracing a finger down the cool surface. “Her memories really are gone.”

“Let’s not give up hope just yet,” Nick said. “Nora’s memories could still come back on their own, right doc?”

“I’ve never used the loungers to explore the complexities of traumatic memory loss,” she admitted. “From a strictly medical standpoint, it’s certainly not impossible. The human brain is an incredibly elastic mechanism.”

The room fell silent.

“It did not work,” Curie lamented with her childlike inflection. “I was very much ‘oping zat it would work.”

“Hold on, it’s not over yet,” Piper said, getting to her feet. “Nora didn’t have the only copy of those memories. They’re up here.” She tapped on her temple. “We have them! We’ve all traveled extensively with Nora, almost since the day she climbed out of the vault. She may not remember, but we can. Plug any one of us into that machine – we’ll show her what she’s missing.”

“We could do a tandem connection,” Nick said, springboarding off Piper’s idea. “Like we did with Kellogg. She’d just be an observer, but being able to look around and experience the memory first-hand would be better than staring at a little screen.”

“Is that safe?” Danse asked.

“For her? Completely,” Amari replied. “There is a slight risk to Mister Valentine, but he has successfully completed the process before. Since he will once again be acting as the host, it will be easiest to use his memories as well.”

“Before you wire me up, doc,” Nick said, “let’s wake up Nora first. I want to make sure she’s okay with stepping into someone else’s memories.”

“Very well. I will begin the process to pull her out.”

Hancock retreated to the stairwell as the glass dome lifted and Nora stirred.

“Wh- what was that? I thought you were going to show me something I forgot,” she whimpered. “It was so real. I saw Nate and Shaun. I- it was so real.”

“It’s alright, Nora. We’re all right here,” Nick said gently. “We’re having some difficulty accessing your memories, so we’d like to try something else.” He paused while she sniffled. “We’d like to load you in parallel with one of us. It would be very similar to what you just saw. Would you be alright experiencing some of my memories?”

“Is it safe?”

“You’d be in no danger,” the old synth assured her.

“What about you?” she asked after a moment.

A lump lodged itself in Hancock’s throat. Even after forgetting who they were, even though she was still wary of robot Nick, kindness and caring were in her nature.

“I’ll be fine,” he replied.

“Okay,” she said timidly. “If you think it will work.”

“Lean back, the doc will put you back under.”

When she was out, Hancock came back into the room.

“Any suggestions regarding what I should show her?” Nick asked as the doctor connected wires to the back of his head.

“Something memorable,” MacCready said, earning a swat from Piper.

“Nora’s most notable traits are her leadership and compassion,” Danse said, shifting the power armor’s weight. “Anything that highlights her accomplishments would not go amiss.”

“Show her helping people,” Piper suggested. “I’m sure there’s plenty to choose from.”

“Oh yez,” Curie agreed. “She ‘as ‘elped so many find zer way.”

“Whenever you’re ready, Mister Valentine,” Amari said. “Access the memory and push it through to the interface.”

Nick’s yellow irises dimmed. Back at the control panel, Hancock and Amari observed the readings.

“It’s working,” she said, typing commands into the keyboard. “Locking in the connection now.”

The screen toggled to display a dark closet, pre-war junk lining the nearby shelves. Nora’s Pip-Boy shone brightly in their direction, barely illuminating the silhouette of her face.

After a few moments, she spoke, voice lowered. “Okay, I think they’re gone.”

“Let’s make this quick,” Nick replied.

Slipping out of the closet, they snuck through the building’s hallway, checking rooms as they went. It looked like it may have been an office at one time, or a school. Now it bore all the marks of a raider den – trash, chems, empty bottles.

Finally, they found what they were searching for. In another storage-type room, chained to a cinderblock, sat a crying child. The boy, no older than ten, immediately threw his arms around Nora.

“We’re gonna get you out of here,” she said, examining the lock and chains around his ankles. “Can you walk?” She pulled a bobby pin out of her belt pouch.

Nick kept watch from the doorway.

The boy nodded. “I didn’t think,” he said between sobs, “anyone was gonna come for me.”

“If you need me, I will _always_ come for you,” she promised. The chains fell off and Nora pushed them away. “How are we looking out there, Nick?”

“All clear,” he said.

“Good. I think one of the rooms a few doors back had a hole in the floor,” she said. “We can drop down to the ground level and then slip out the back entrance.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll follow you.”

“We need to be quiet,” Nora told the child. “Here, hold my hand and stick close to me.”

They backtracked through the hallway, stopping whenever they heard a sound. Most of the raiders were located on the third floor, sleeping off their last bender judging by the cacophony of snores.

Nora slipped through the hole first, calling back up, “Careful. It’s quite a drop.”

Nick lowered the boy down, waiting for her signal before dropping him into waiting arms. He followed, and from there it was a short walk to the exit.

“We left the power armor over here,” she said, leading the way through the overgrown grass. “We’ll grab it and be on our way back to your parents’ farm.”

Suddenly, the child yelped. A raider had jumped out from behind a tree, scooping the boy up and holding him like a shield, a pipe pistol pressed to his temple.

Nora and Nick drew their weapons. “Let him go,” she demanded, her voice hard and authoritative.

“I saw the power armor,” the raider rasped, squeezing his captive. “Figured it was only a matter of time before you came back for it.”

“Let. The boy. Go.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he replied gleefully. “See, I know who you are. I know you won’t risk shooting me, not while I got the kid.”

Her muzzle dipped. “You’re right,” she said, slowly reaching into her bag. She held out a fusion core. “You can have the power armor, just let him go.”

The raider paused, mulling over her offer.

“Go on, take it,” she said, and tossed the core at him.

The raider looked up. As soon as he dropped the boy to catch the core, Nora popped her rifle up, shooting him in the head. The man fell.

She rushed over to the terrified boy. “Are you okay? You alright?”

“Thank you,” the boy repeated, “thank you.”

The machine made a high buzzing sound.

“Her heart rate and breathing are extremely elevated,” Doctor Amari reported. “We need to sever the connection and pull her out.”

“Do it,” Hancock said.

In tears, Nora pushed against the rising lid. Danse and Piper knelt beside her. Nick was still in a trancelike state, slowly coming back as Amari unplugged the wires leading to his head.

“What happened?” Piper asked, grabbing her hands. “What’s wrong?”

“I shot someone,” Nora sobbed. “I killed him.”

“You rescued that kid, Nora,” the reporter said. “He would’ve died if you hadn’t been there to save him.”

“No, no it’s all wrong,” Nora continued. “This world is dark, and cruel. And I want no part in it.”

“But,” Danse said, “if we try again, you might remember-”

“No!” Nora yelled. “I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember killing people. I don’t want to be that person.” She cried into Piper’s shoulder. “Just take me home. Please, just take me home.”

MacCready jumped up to escape the heart-wrenching scene and nearly ran into Hancock, waiting in the stairwell.

“You heard her,” the ghoul said, his voice empty. “Take her back home. We’re done here.”


	13. Chapter 13

The first evening stars twinkled in the distant sky. Nora and her team of protectors filed through the gate and on to their communal home. Concealed in the shade of a rusting carport, Hancock observed their solemn march. The former General of the Minutemen practically drug her feet from one end of her prized settlement to the other, downcast stare warding off any hopeful soul with an urge to approach and ask how it went. Seeing Nate and Shaun again – and everything else – obviously took its toll.

Left alone with his thoughts, the long walk back to Sanctuary fulfilled his expectations of too few things to shoot and too many anxious faces. Some of them even had the gall to ask him what they should do now, as if he had any infernal clue. Now, those thoughts returned, echoed by the whispers filling each corner of the neighborhood. Even Preston went to a secluded backyard to hide, sitting with his head in his hands.

Hancock drew his knife from its sheath. Idly spinning the blade around his fingers, he embraced the silence. He loved Nora, and just because some super mutant pressed her brain reset button didn’t mean he stopped loving her. But she forgot about him – forgot that she loved him. She didn’t want to remember. If she never got those memories back, did they really happen? Where did he go from here?

The knife clattered to the ground. A fresh cut stung the side of his hand, slowly bleeding. Picking up the knife, he wiped the blade on his trousers and returned it to the sheath. He loved Nora, he told himself as he left his dark cover. He would give anything to see her reach for him. As he drew closer to the end of the cul-de-sac and the large pre-war house, his pace stuttered. He would do anything for her.

He stopped.

John Hancock was not a man of indecision. He was not inclined to second-guess his judgment. Which is why, when he made up his mind, he took action immediately.

Spinning on his heel, he marched back the way he came. Past the armory, past Nora’s old house, past the Minutemen regional office she insisted on completing with a sprained wrist, he strode on without a backwards glance.

Danse stood at the gate, his power armor clanking when he turned.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked. In rare form, the former paladin’s tone carried only a small fraction of its normal judgmental edge. He didn’t even scowl or call him “ghoul.” Maybe they were bonding after all.

“Out,” Hancock replied, avoiding the roadblock. When heavy footsteps started following, he paused. “You gonna try and stop me?” he growled.

“That wasn’t my intention,” Danse said.

“I’ll be at the Red Rocket,” Hancock said, moving away. “Go back to gate duty.”

The Red Rocket used to contain many of Nora’s power armor projects, before she built Sturges his dream garage. Now, aside from the leftover furniture and appliances, the place was empty. Many of the residents still considered it a part of Sanctuary, but it was more historical-landmark than functioning-outpost.

Hancock settled down on the couch. In his pocket, his hand traced the smooth plastic of a Jet inhaler. A roadside raider camp was thin pickings, but it left him with a couple junk pistols for Nora’s armory, a few canisters of Jet, and a box of Mentats. He didn’t get nearly enough satisfaction from gutting the raiders.

In his head, Nora’s voice thanked him for going clean, praising his resolution. She said that she worried about him – worried that one day, his fun habit would take him away from her.

He rubbed his tired eyes. It had been such a long time since he’d heard that voice. Popping open the Mentat tin, he placed a chalky tablet on his tongue and leaned back into the couch.

It was only a matter of time before someone came looking for him. After an hour alone to brood, Nick stepped through the open garage door.

“Danse said I’d find you here,” he said in greeting.

Hancock rolled his eyes at the mention of the Brotherhood soldier, his hands worrying the gold band on his finger.

“I’d ask you how you’re holding up, but seeing as you’re here,” Nick drawled. Not receiving a response, the synth eyed the chems sitting on a nearby coffee table. “Are you high right now?”

“Didn’t take any Jet,” Hancock mumbled, lifting his head from the back of the couch. “But I needed to think.”

Nick dragged a chair closer to sit facing his friend.

After a few breaths and false starts, he spoke. “I think I’m losing it, Nick. It’s like there’s a stranger in her body. Her memories might never come back. The person she was is just gone. I know that’s not really the case, but when I look at her, I can’t help but see someone who just crawled out of a vault. Doesn’t know the wasteland, doesn’t know why everything’s suddenly big and scary. Someone who just wanted to find her son.” He paused. “I dunno. You met her long before I did. Am I way off the mark?”

Nick shook his head. “That’s fairly accurate,” he muttered.

“When she came out of the vault,” Hancock said, “she was scared. She had nothing. This was an empty neighborhood. She told me that she kept moving because of her son, but she never mentioned being afraid. By the time I met her, she seemed fearless.

“It’s making me wonder how much of that she did on her own. What was it like to come out of the vault, and have nothing? Not even a husband or a son. Alone. How many times did she cry herself to sleep at night, alone and afraid? How many packs of wild dogs and raider camps did she have to struggle through to teach herself how to use and maintain weapons? To get to Diamond City? To find you? I’ve seen people sink that low. Most of them never come back up.

“But Nora,” he paused, voice shaking, “after everything that happened to her, she kept going. When everyone around her told her to worry about herself because the world didn’t care, she helped people. People that wouldn’t think twice about gunning her down to steal her stuff, she fixed their water pumps. She gave them food and charged into a super mutant nest to rescue their family members because no one else would.

“She gave, when so much had already been taken from her. She worked herself to exhaustion, but loved doing it. And bit by bit, she built up communities full of people that wanted to give but didn’t know how. When they heard her story, they all rallied behind her. She amassed an army by trying to make friends.

“And now, it’s like she’s back at the beginning. No husband, no son. But she’s not alone this time. She doesn’t remember why, but there’s an entire community standing behind her – stocked to the brim with supplies. And more out there. She walks into any of them, they’ll give her whatever she wants, no questions asked. Because she rescued their kids. She scared away the raiders that were blackmailing them into handing over their crops. She made sure no one else would be stolen and replaced.

“She’s given so much to the people of the Commonwealth, seen them through everything that’s happened. Maybe it’s her turn to be supported, instead of supporting everyone else. She won her war. Now, she has a chance to rebuild her life. The life she would have wanted before she took up our fight.”

Nick narrowed his eyes at the ghoul. “Where are you going with all this?”

“I’m going back to Goodneighbor,” he said. “For good.”

“You can’t do that. What about Nora? You wouldn’t leave her.”

“She’s got everything she could ever want here,” Hancock pointed out. “And I ain’t on that list. Face it, Nick – she can’t even look at me anymore. I’ll just do her the favor and get outta her life.”

Nick scowled, shaking his head. “Well if that’s not the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, I don’t know what is. _She loves you_ , ‘ya moody bastard. Her memories could still come back. She’d scrap me for parts if I let you walk out on her.”

“I ain’t gonna go jump off a building or eat a bullet if that’s what you’re worried about,” Hancock replied. “I love her too, more than anything else. But I can’t sit around waiting for someone that might never come back. She’s got a chance to make a clean start, Nick. She can learn how to make it out here from the safety of her own neighborhood. She can find someone who,” he swallowed, “someone who won’t make her defend their relationship wherever she went. Someone who wouldn’t be the cause of scrutiny and judgment whenever they held hands. Someone like her. She can have something better. Staying, watching her move on – move on to someone that deserved her – _that_ would kill me.”

“So that’s it?” Nick asked. “After everything you two’ve been through, you’re just giving up? I thought you were done running away.”

“I love her, Nick. I want her to be happy. Even-”

“If you say you love her enough to let her go, I’m gonna blow a head gasket. I’ve got half a mind to drag you back there, John McDonough. Don’t think I won’t.”

“If you could’ve given Jenny a second chance,” he said, his voice low.

The detective flinched back.

“Wouldn’t you give up everything for that? The agency, revenge against Winter – even her.”

Eyes hidden beneath the brim of his fedora, Nick’s hands shook as he retrieved a cigarette. He rose from his chair and headed outside, throwing over his shoulder, “This isn’t over yet.”


	14. Chapter 14

Another night of fitful sleep left Hancock drained and disheartened. He moped around the Red Rocket as the sun began its daily ascent – still confident in his decision to return to Goodneighbor but too lethargic to put his boots on the road.

Eventually, staring at the same patch of peeling paint and listening to the hum from the fluorescent lights wore his patience thin enough to force him outside. It was a beautiful day and he was miserable in spite of it. The sun was shining, the air was warm, and he stood in the middle of a service station, scowling at the pavement. Pulling out a cigarette, he wandered aimlessly.

He had a town to run. Sanctuary didn’t really need him – they had Preston and Nick. He was put in a de facto leadership position simply because of his proximity to Nora. Back home, he earned his title with blood. Sure, Fahrenheit was doing an outstanding job while he was away. A little tight-laced for his tastes, but the woman was like that in almost everything. He could go back and throw a party. That always cheered him up. He’d throw a party that would make yesterday’s chems and booze giveaway look like a church meeting. Sure, he’d probably wallow for the first hour or two, but the right liquor would eventually have him sitting on top of the bar like he used to in the old days.

Maybe he’d stop by Diamond City on his way there, pick up some of those Russian boys’ moonshine. While he was there, he might as well stroll into the mayor’s office and put his feet up on the desk overlooking the city. They named that Sullivan kid mayor after Geneva proved too braindead to handle the office. Kid was still kind of limp, though; wouldn’t put up too much of a fight. He could probably take a nap and get up to leave when he was good and ready.

He looked up from his boots, and his thoughts, to see that his feet had carried him in the opposite direction of where he wanted to go. Standing beside the Minuteman statue, Sanctuary Hills stretched out in front of him. He watched the transformation of the little suburb over the past year. What once stood as a rundown collection of half-collapsed structures, home to the few battered-but-surviving refugees of Quincy, now served as an active town center and base of operations for the single largest military power in the Commonwealth, even rivaling The Castle in the southeast. The main road and branching walkways had become as familiar as his native street corners and back alleys.

And everywhere he looked – memories. Memories of Nora. Memories of the happiest times in his life.

But his memories weren’t enough. On their own, they would never be enough.

His attention perked up at a snapping twig. Across the river, on the opposite bank, was Nora. She was alone, and didn’t appear to have noticed him.

Seeing her was a bittersweet tonic. He couldn’t approach her, and he couldn’t run away. Instead, he was stuck in limbo, unable to take his eyes off her figure as she picked her way through the sparse brush to the water’s edge.

In one hand, she carried a pistol. A tiny thing equipped with a silencer, the token from the Railroad had obviously been placed into her hand because it wouldn’t give much kickback when fired. It was certainly a far cry from her pride and joy laser rifle. At least she had a gun, even if she carried it as if it was a flashlight.

She walked along the brick wall lining the river, moving slowly and carefully. He followed on the opposite bank, keeping hidden behind the moss-riddled tree trunks. If this proved to be the last time he saw her, he wanted it to last more than a few seconds.

Nora apparently wanted to get closer to the water, because she slid down a collapsed portion of the wall and continued walking along the exposed riverbank. He wondered why she was alone – she could get hurt.

Eventually the wall behind her ended, but she kept hiking in the direction of Misty Lake. She made a face at the trash and debris along the edge. The ground underfoot grew rocky, and she almost stumbled but managed to catch herself.

Suddenly, a man dressed in brown jumped out from a dense pocket of brush. He grabbed Nora, securing one hand over her mouth as he dragged her away. She dropped the gun, struggling feebly against his firm grip. His other hand held a knife to her ribs.

John Hancock was not a man of indecision. He broke cover and leapt down the bank. The low water level probably enabled the raider to sneak into the settlement in the first place. Now, Hancock used the exposed high points in the riverbed to sprint across. In a matter of seconds, he was on top of them. The raider kept his eyes facing the settlement, obviously not expecting an attack from behind.

He ripped the raider off Nora and slung him to the side. Nora lost her footing and fell, but the man came hurling back. Hancock recognized the wild blows and enhanced strength of a frequent Psycho user. When he caught the raider’s knife hand, it took all of his strength to wrestle the man to the ground and extract the blade from his grasp. The wild man bucked, breaking Hancock’s hold and sending the knife skittering into the water.

Enraged and bleeding, the raider lunged for the shotgun on Hancock’s back. Both with their hands on the barrel, they pushed and pulled, trying to throw each other off balance and gain control of the weapon. The shotgun’s muzzle danced erratically with their thrashing. Out of the corner of his eye, Hancock spotted Nora huddled on the bank. He couldn’t let the gun go off in her direction.

He threw his bodyweight into a twisting motion, trying to steer their struggle away from her. Seeing an opportunity, the raider reached for the trigger and fired.

Pain bloomed across Hancock’s side. The kickback from the shotgun loosened both their holds on the barrel and he immediately sent a left hook into the raider’s jaw. The split second of confusion was all it took for him to wrench the gun out of the raider’s grasp and fire the other barrel up through his chin.

The next thing he knew, Hancock was on his back. Hand pressed to his wound, he craned his neck, searching for Nora. She sat a few yards away, arms wrapped around her middle, trembling and muddy. He crawled towards her, not caring when she flinched back. His side screamed in pain when a river rock scraped against the gaping hole in his jacket.

“Nora,” he rasped, chest heaving from the fight. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

She scooted away from him, the same fear in her eyes. But there was no blood, no obvious injuries.

He flopped back on his back, hand pressing harder against the wound as blood slowly leaked through his fingers. “It’s okay,” he groaned. “You’re safe now.”

It really was a beautiful day out, he thought as he looked up at the sky.

“Help!” Nora called. “Over here. Somebody help!”

Already alerted by the gunshots, it only took a few seconds for help to arrive. Nora’s faithful companions rushed to pick her off the ground and make sure she was okay. She disappeared into the crowd before he was back on his feet.

Supported on either side by MacCready and Preston, he staggered up the hill into the settlement.

“Go find Curie,” MacCready yelled. “I think he was shot.”

The table was a lot colder than he remembered. Stripped to his waist, the metal surface numbed his back. Nick walked in as Curie was applying the final pieces of tape.

“How’s he doing, doc?”

“Ze buckshot struck ‘is right side and continued out. Due to ze close range of ze shot, ze pellets were incredibly concentrated and zerefore blew out a piece of ‘is flesh. Luckily, nozing major was struck and blood loss was minimal. It may take a few weeks for ze ‘ole to completely fill in, but ‘e should make a full recovery.”

“Well, thanks for your help,” he replied.

“But of course. My duty is to serve,” she said and walked off to put away her tools.

“You didn’t have to come see me, Nick,” Hancock said. “I’m alright.”

“You were shot at point-blank range.”

He shrugged. “You do what you gotta,” he said. “Is Nora okay?”

“Fine,” Nick replied. “Just a little shaken up. You wanna tell me what happened?”

He sighed, the stitches in his side pulling uncomfortably if he took too deep a breath. “I saw Nora walking by the river. Raider jumped out. He grabbed Nora, I grabbed the raider. Raider shot me. I shot him back. Good ending all around.”

“Nora told us he threatened to kill her – revenge for what she did to his friends,” he said.

“Why wasn’t someone with her?” he questioned, a hint of anger spilling into his tone. “All she had was a tiny pistol and she dropped it.”

“You try convincing her to sit still and stare at a wall all day,” Nick replied. “She’s just as hardheaded as you.”

“You gotta be with her, Nick,” he said, shaking his head. “Promise me that you won’t let her out of your sight. That you’ll protect her with your life.”

“So you’re still set on leaving?”

“It’s the right thing to do. She’s got a chance to start over, to let other people take care of her instead of trying to take care of everyone else. She deserves that.”

“She needs you, John, and I’m not just talking about what happened at the river. She needs you here.”

“I gotta town that needs me too,” he replied sternly. “I’m telling ‘ya, Nick, she’s better without me.”

They turned their heads at the sound of yelling. It had to be Piper – only she could achieve that level of volume to broadcast her frustration.

“Hey,” she barked, busting into the clinic. “What’s this I hear about you going back to Goodneighbor?”

Hancock slumped back on the table. “Great. Not you too.”

“You can’t just leave after all the progress you’ve made,” she argued.

“Progress?” he echoed with disbelief. “Hey, news flash: she still hates me. In case you haven’t noticed, she can’t even look me in the eye without screaming and running away.”

“Well, you are a little rough around the edges,” she acknowledged, “but that’s not the point. Look, I know you didn’t ask for my opinion, but I’m going to give it to you anyway.”

“Shoot me again,” he begged the detective.

Piper continued, “Nora doesn’t remember you. So what? All you have to do is make her fall in love with you again.”

“I take it back,” Hancock said. “Get me a gun, I’ll do it myself.”

“Just listen for a minute,” the reporter said. “It’s not really that crazy if you think about it. You made her fall in love with you once – what’s to say it won’t happen again? She’s still the same person. Once she gets over the melting skin and missing facial features, you just lay on the charms – and boom! Things go back to the way they were.”

“They can’t,” he insisted. “It would be better for her if they didn’t. Do you know how much grief she gets just for being with me? How many people, _not_ including the Brotherhood, judge her? It’s not just that I’m a ghoul – my reputation ain’t pretty. Is that what you want for her?”

“It doesn’t matter what we want,” Nick replied. “She’s the one that chose you, reputation and all.”

“The person that chose me is dead.” He lowered his voice. “There’s no way she’d make that mistake a second time.”

Silenced by his retort, Nick and Piper exchanged a troubled look.

“At least stay for a few more days,” said the synth. “Let that wound of yours heal up.”

“Nah. As soon as I can stand on my own, I’m gone,” he said resolutely. Gone and forgotten.


	15. Chapter 15

“Hey,” he said, catching the attention of a passing farmer. “Is Nora around?”

The farmer looked over his shoulders. “No, I think she’s still inside,” he said to the ghoul standing in the clinic doorway. “Thanks for saving her, by the way.”

Hancock waved away the appreciation as he passed. Clothes draped over one arm, he stiffly made his way to the water pumps beside the brahmin pen. Mama Murphy had been kind enough to mend his signature outfit while he regained his strength in the clinic. In addition to sewing shut the holes blasted into the fabric, she also cleaned the dirt and mud left behind by the tussle. At least she didn’t see the need to lecture him about leaving.

Putting his clothes on a nearby bench, he pumped some water into a bucket and scrubbed away the remaining mud on his face and hands. It was for the best. Nick was watching out for her, and she’d no longer have to fight and struggle. The groundwork was already finished – now she could enjoy a peaceful existence reaping the rewards of all that hard work.

“Hey, Jamie,” said an approaching Minuteman. “Could you cover my next shift? I’ve got stomach pains like you wouldn’t believe.”

Hancock intentionally flicked his eyes to the red frock coat and tricorner hat sitting nearby.

“Oh, Mayor Hancock,” the Minuteman said. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” With that, he scurried away.

Hancock sighed, splashing his face. Without his fancy outfit, he was just another scrawny ghoul, indistinguishable from the other wrinkled faces walking around.

Finished, he looked around for something he could use to dry off the water and was surprised to see a little girl. She held out a towel for him, smiling when he took it, and then skipped away. A few months ago, the five-year-old cried anytime she saw a ghoul or super mutant. Even Nick had a tough time gaining her trust. Super mutants killed the girl’s parents, and feral ghouls nearly did the same to the kind people that took her in. Until Nora arrived.

It wasn’t the same, he told himself as he dried his face. Nora would almost certainly get over her fear of ghouls, but being close to one was a choice she simply might not make a second time.

Drying his hands, he paused when he felt the hard metal band around his ring finger. Tarnished and slightly scuffed, it still gleamed when he held it in the sunlight. Even though Nate was dead, she held on to the gold band, occasionally clutching it to her heart when she remembered him. She gave him the ring on a cool night overlooking the bay. He’d heard about the pre-war tradition some years ago, never once expecting himself to join in. But he slipped on the ring without a second thought. He was hers – he’d already made that clear. Now, everyone else would know it too, even if they were apart.

He twisted the ring on his finger, no longer feeling the giddy pride it once brought him. He grasped the band, poised to pull it off, when a noise from behind startled him. It sounded like a gasp after being drenched in freezing water. He turned.

Nora stood a few yards away, hands held over her mouth. Staring at him, at his exposed and ravaged flesh, his face burned with shame. He was used to seeing the familiar look of shock and disgust directed his way. Seeing it come from Nora stung more than all the previous times combined.

“I’m sorry,” she said, gaze pointed at the ground. “I didn’t mean to, umm.”

He remained motionless, torn between grabbing a shirt to cover himself and staying still so she wouldn’t run away.

“Thank you, for saving me.”

This surprised him. He clenched his hand into a fist – it would have been easier if she’d run.

“No problem,” he replied coldly.

She paused, chewing on her bottom lip. The proximity was clearly distressing her.

“What’s your name?” she blurted out.

He made his voice hard, unconcerned. “Hancock.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. “I probably knew that, before. Everyone here tells me I lost my memory, so, I’m sorry if I forgot you.”

He nodded. His body slowly grew numb at the admission coming from her lips.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, forcing herself to take a step forward. “Piper told me the word for you, but I already forgot what it was. I mean, the word for people _like_ you.”

“I’m a ghoul,” he said bitterly.

“Oh.”

“It’s what happens when a normal person is exposed to too much radiation. Instead of dying, we turn into this. It’s not a pretty process.” Or outcome.

“Does it still hurt?” she asked.

The question brought him back to the first time she asked him that. Barely a week after setting out together, gradually becoming friends, they bunked down in an abandoned house. His back to her, she saw his bare skin for the first time – saw what the radiation from the experimental drug did to him. Before going to sleep, Nora asked if all those marks and scars hurt. She was curious. Still wary and unsure, but certainly not hateful.

He answered her the same way he did then. “Not at all.”

Taking another slow step, she asked, “Could I? I mean, do you mind? If I? Touch?”

Mindful of the fear he caused her, he slowly squared his shoulders, bowed his head, and nodded. She closed the distance between them. When her trembling fingertips brushed the surface of his chest, she flinched back. He stayed still as she steeled herself, reaching out again.

Over her shoulder, he noticed a collection of her friends standing in the shade of a nearby structure, watching their interaction with hopeful curiosity.

Gently, as if he was made of delicate paper, she brushed her fingers down the tattered texture of his skin. It almost made him sob, reminded of the way she used to run her hands along his body, exploring the roads and valleys as they lay in bed together, reading him like a book. But it also reminded him of that same night in the abandoned house when she ran her hands across him for the first time. This was similar to that first time – gentle, cautious, platonic. Her hands moved in straight lines instead of following the topography his damaged flesh suggested.

Lost in the moment, his eyelids sank. Though the bittersweet knowledge that her hands no longer explored him with loving interest, but solemn curiosity, played in his mind, he relished in the sensation of her touch. He’d missed this with an ache more painful than a Med-X withdrawal. At least he got to experience it one last time. She stopped at his shoulder.

“Hobble-bush.”

Eyes wide, Nora withdrew her hand.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. It just came out of my mouth,” she said.

The last time he heard that word, Nora was telling him about her cousin tripping over the aptly named plant. She wanted to hear more about his ghoulification and get a closer look at his scars. In return, he asked her to tell him something random about pre-war life – something the circle of old ghouls wouldn’t bring up in their reminiscing chats. What followed was a slightly amusing tale about the family hiking trips she used to go on with her cousins. Apparently she had a particularly clumsy cousin who would inevitably get tripped up once per trip because of the “evil, scheming hobble-bush.”

“You alright, sister?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, face pale. “I don’t know why, but it almost seems intentional, the more I think about it.”

Her hand returned to his skin, carefully avoiding the white bandages on his side and crossing to pause at the bottom edge of his ribs.

“Like this,” she said, brushing an abnormally straight scar. Eyes wide, she glanced up at his face. “You were stabbed.”

He held his breath. He didn’t hope.

Squinting, as if she could see through the scar, she continued. “The doctor wouldn’t fix you up. So I did.”

Laying in her home in Diamond City, on a mattress pulled from the loft, Hancock blinked awake from a short nap. His side was sore, the result of some bigoted smoothskin stabbing him in the market. Whether the man hated ghouls, Goodneighbor, or him personally, Hancock couldn’t say. He stuck him pretty good though, the knife glancing off his ribs before he was even aware of the attacker. And Nora – good, sweet Nora – cussing up a storm when the guards wouldn’t lift a finger to help get him to the doctor, and then again when the doctor refused to treat him.

So she looped his arm over her shoulders and helped him walk to Home Plate. She did alright patching him up – the stitches were nothing stellar but she was obviously improving. Ever since then, she did everything she could to make him comfortable, sitting by his side in case he needed anything.

She was still sitting there, staring blankly ahead while she chewed on her bottom lip.

“Watching me sleep?” he asked, voice rougher than usual.

Nora jumped but quickly recovered. “Sorry. Guess I zoned out.”

“You got something on your mind?”

“Just regretting that this happened, regretting coming to Diamond City. I’ve been traveling with you for so long, I guess I forgot you weren’t just ‘John.’ You’re ‘John Hancock, Mayor of Goodneighbor.’ You had a _bodyguard_. This made me remember why she was there.”

“Sunshine, look at me,” he said softly. “What happened, it ain’t your fault. You gotta quit blaming yourself, especially since you were the only person willing to stop me from bleeding out.”

“It’s not right,” she said, leaning forward to brush her fingers over the fresh stitches. “You’re not a second-class citizen. I don’t know why everyone here thinks they’re better than ghouls.”

“Not everyone,” he pointed out. “And you know what? Bein’ Mayor Hancock has its moments, but I’d rather be ‘just John’ any day.”

She gave him a gentle smile. Being with her was like a constant Daytripper high, but without the nonsensical colors and people mooing like brahmin. Not only was she getting her hands dirty helping the people with no one else to turn to, she brought justice to the streets of his own town. He had to admit, the way she lowered her voice when dressed in that dark trench coat and fedora got him hot and bothered on more than one occasion. It wasn’t like she didn’t have anything to lose, either. While she went around killing bad guys and mending fences, she was on a desperate hunt for her son – a son stolen from her and currently in the clutches of the Institute.

“Nora,” he said, “you’re staring again.”

She immediately backed off and hid behind her Pip-Boy screen. “Sorry.”

He chuckled. “You don’t gotta apologize,” he said, shamelessly folding his hands behind his head. Bare-chested, he thrilled at the small hint of pink rising on her cheeks. “See something you like?”

“Maybe,” she whispered.

Her admission left him speechless. Flirting was something he did with anyone and everyone – it was a great way of toning down a tense situation. So when he expected her normal light-hearted dismissal and instead got a “maybe,” his brain stuttered to a halt. He’d never seen Nora flirt, not even with that MacCready kid who practically worshipped the ground she walked on. It was the first time Hancock wondered if she felt the same way about him.

The off-key bellows from a pair of brahmin broke him out of the memory. Nora still had a light dusting of pink on her cheeks.

“I told you, ‘maybe,’” she said, furrowing her brow. “But I don’t remember what I was saying ‘maybe’ about.”

Her attention traveled upward, no longer cautious and platonic but full-handed, following the grooves lining his skin. Her fingers stopped at his sternum, where a few days ago, she kissed tenderly, teasingly. Under the surface, his heart pounded, trying to make up for the lapse in his lungs.

“You woke me up, after we got back from the Glowing Sea. We were in bed together,” she said, eyes darting around. “You said you had something to tell me – something important. You told me that- that you loved me. You said you wanted to be with me always, that you couldn’t imagine life without me anymore.”

Her hand trailed over his collarbone and up to his cheek.

“John,” she whispered, “I remember.”

He let out a shaky breath; it felt as if a brahmin was standing on his chest.

“Like you stitched memories into the texture of my skin,” he said.

Nora nodded, her eyes watering.

Reaching out slowly, in case she hadn’t remembered everything, Hancock cupped her face in his hand, stroking her smooth cheek like he did before, and slowly leaned towards her.

Always quicker, Nora shot forward, crashing her lips against his. He melted into her as if not a moment had passed between them, arms wrapping around her small frame as a cheer rose up from their audience. Hancock merely rolled his eyes and returned to kissing the woman he loved, and who undoubtedly loved him.

Panting as they parted, Nora touched her forehead to his. “I love you, John,” she said.

“I love you too, Nora.”

The moment didn’t last long – their friends immediately mobbed them with questions confirming Nora’s returned memory and exclamations of happiness at seeing the two of them reunited.

“Oh wow,” Nora said when the commotion died down, pressing her palm to her forehead. “I was a total wet rag. Wow, I am so embarrassed right now.”

“We’re just glad to have you back, General,” Preston said, agreement rising from the group.

“Speaking of which, hold that thought,” she said, stepping away with Hancock’s arm wrapped around her waist.

Putting her pinkies in her mouth, she let out a shrill whistle. His ears were ringing but he couldn’t find it in him to care.

“Attention, everyone! May I have your attention please,” she called. “Your general. Is. Back!”

Suddenly the entire population of Sanctuary Hills rushed Nora, surrounding her with hugs and smiling faces and a few tears. Through it all, Hancock kept a hand on her, whether wrapped around her waist, clasping her hand, or holding on to her shoulder. Every now and again, he’d give her a little tug, and she’d look over her shoulder and smile at him – no fear, just love.

The crowd parted at the sound of frantic barking.

“Puppy boy!” Nora exclaimed, throwing open her arms.

The shepherd leaped into the air, taking them both down to the ground where he covered them with wet kisses. His non-stop whines and mournful whimpers received more than one “aww” from the group.

And because he could, because nothing would stop him ever again, Hancock took her face in his hands and kissed her.


	16. Chapter 16

Lying in bed together, her head pillowed on his chest, Hancock ran his hand down her bare back. It was a conscious effort to keep his movements slow and smooth as he waited to hear how Nora would respond. After holding him in suspense for a few long minutes, she took a deep breath in.

“I think I’m surprised, more than anything else,” she admitted, fingers trailing over the well-known scars and dents that covered his body. “A person really is the sum of their memories. They influence what we believe, what we like, what we don’t like, even our personalities. So, I guess I can understand your reasoning, and why you wanted to leave. When I lost my memories, I was a completely different person. I was afraid, and weak. It was worse than leaving the vault.” She paused, pushing herself up. “But I never lost the inclination to care about you. You know what I mean? Not necessarily immediately care about you, but eventually. I was still the same person who grew to care about you when we started traveling together, more or less, so I could do it again. That’s why I approached you at the water pumps. Yes, you scared me, but you also got hurt, and I couldn’t _not_ care about that.”

He chuckled. “Whatever you do, don’t tell Piper about that.”

“Piper?” she asked, head tilted to the side.

“Never mind, it’s not important.” Gently rubbing the gold band sitting on her finger, he paused to push a lock of hair out of her face. “I almost walked out on the best thing that happened to me. I even convinced myself you’d be better off without me.”

She snuggled back against him. “I’m glad you didn’t, but please promise me you won’t think about leaving again? No matter what happens. I can’t imagine life without you either.”

“You don’t gotta worry about that, love,” he said, swapping their positions to lean over her. “I’m yours to the very end.” He peppered reverent kisses down the column of her throat, making her purr with contentment. “Besides, if you ever lose your memory again, I know how to make you get it back. I will follow you across the Commonwealth, butt naked.”

She giggled, squirming under his weight.

“You think I’m kidding, but I am dead serious,” he threatened, giving her a pinch. After a few moments, she stilled, looking up at him with eyes made of priceless jade.

“I thought I lost you, Nora,” he said, voice low. “When that happened, I lost a little bit of myself. Without you-”

She stroked his face when he faltered, encouraging him to go on.

“Don’t ever forget me,” he pleaded in a whisper. “Not you. Not again. I’m not strong enough to go through that again.”

She leaned up, capturing his lips and allowing him to pour out all the fear and doubt that accumulated inside him, tears running down her cheeks. When he was painfully and wonderfully empty, left with nothing but her, he leaned back.

“I love you, John,” she said.

“I love you too, Nora.”


End file.
